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In this Wednesday Night Dharma Talk, Sensei Koshin Flint Sparks explores the Metta Sutta as a practice that asks far more of us than simple sentiment. Quoting two lines of Louise Glück's poem, Koshin highlights the sharp and sometimes frightening edge of love: “Why love what you will lose? — There's nothing else to love.” We naturally appreciate the full and sincere love from others… Source
I sat down with Chris Beck, the founder of Innovative 3D Manufacturing in Franklin, Indiana, and the line that stuck with me was simple. Everything he owns is leveraged into this company. That is what skin in the game actually looks like, and it is the reason his team shows up at 2 a.m. on a Sunday when a job is on the line. Innovative is one of the few shops built around metal additive, laser powder bed fusion, with a full CNC machine shop bolted right alongside it. Chris started in 2017 with two engineers and a plan for ten printers and ten people. Today he is running 25 metal printers, 8 CNC machines, a handful of wire EDMs, and 32 employees out of a brand new 30,000 square foot facility, and last month they shipped more than 20,000 metal parts. What I loved about this story is how unglamorous the middle was. Chris bootstrapped the whole thing with no private equity, and he spent years running equipment himself and chasing what he calls 4,000 rabbit holes trying to find work that would pay for million dollar printers. He watched private equity backed competitors dump 30 to 50 million into the same idea and end up with their machines at auction two years later. The difference, he will tell you, is that his people care because they have something to protect. We get into the parts of additive that actually make money. The three boxes a part has to check, why qualification is the real bottleneck for the whole industry, and how his machining and foundry backgrounds let him design parts that come off the printer 80 percent finished. If you have ever wondered whether metal additive is a real business or a science project, Chris makes the case as clearly as anyone I have talked to. We also get into his team. Why he mostly will not hire book smart engineers, how he keeps his culture free of bad seeds, and the small perks that matter more to his guys than a raise. This one is a masterclass in grit. What's Covered in this Episode (1:19) Introducing Chris Beck and Innovative 3D Manufacturing (3:42) A snapshot of the shop: 25 metal printers, 8 CNC machines, wire EDMs, and 32 employees (6:04) DN Solutions and Kennametal SVM 4100 giveaway and the IMTS scavenger hunt (6:45) From Purdue and the big automakers to a small Okuma machine tool distributor (8:15) The lowest paying offer that taught him the most, and why wearing every hat mattered (10:55) Quoting turnkey lines and cycle times, then moving into sales (11:55) A wire EDM dream, a twelve year detour through financial services, and his own brokerage (14:40) Getting pulled back into manufacturing and starting 3D printing and rapid prototyping (17:34) Flipping from prototyping to production and shipping more than 20,000 parts a month (19:21) The Job Shops Workshop and networking reception at IMTS (20:21) Has industry caught up to additive? (Acceptance versus qualification) (20:58) Where additive already wins: implants, space and rocket, and GE's fuel nozzles (23:14) The defense qualification maze and the firearms market printing a million suppressors (25:25) Running 100+ prototype jobs a month, 400+ NDAs, and the fast make program (30:28) Design freedom and the three boxes a part has to check to be a good additive candidate (32:48) Why qualification is the real bottleneck, AMS 7032, and America Makes (34:55) Kennametal's Next Level Shop and the bike giveaway at IMTS 2026 (35:58) What finally cracked sales: one foot in the door and relentless past performance (38:51) Building a team of farm kid problem solvers over book smart engineers (41:21) Old school hours, tryout Saturdays, and keeping the culture free of bad seeds (50:16) What turned the tide: surviving, staying flexible, and bootstrapping without private equity (53:22) Skin in the game, profit sharing, and the small perks his guys value more than a raise (58:17) The machining edge and vertical integration that let him ship parts 80 percent as printed Resources Mentioned MakingChips Giveaway IMTS Kennametal America Makes Renishaw DN Solutions Connect with Chris Beck Innovative 3D Manufacturing Connect with Chris on LinkedIn Email Chris directly at chris.beck@innovative3dm.com
Hannah Richell on Writing Memoir, Grief, and An Ocean and a Day Join host and author Pamela Cook as she interviews author Hannah Richell about her memoir An Ocean and a Day, which explores the sudden death of her husband Matt in a surfing accident at Tamarama Beach in 2014 and the long journey of grief that followed. Richell discusses journaling as a survival tool, shaping years of writing into a memoir, and choosing a circular, tidal structure that moves between past and present to show what was lost and reflect how grief is experienced. She shares key influences and also talks about narrating the audiobook herself, deciding what to include about her children, and how touring and reader responses have been unexpectedly uplifting. 00:00 Level Up Writing Courses 01:39 Episode Updates and Memoir Intro 05:15 Memoir Overview and Loss 08:38 Beach Bookends and Ending 13:22 Writing Grief Into Words 17:30 Tidal Timeline Structure 24:02 Journaling to Memoir Draft2 9:38 Visitation Dream Story 32:56 Host Family Grief Reflection 36:42 Kids as Anchors 38:05 Writing Through Nights 38:42 Books That Held Me 42:34 Quoting and Permissions 44:18 Narrating the Audiobook 49:10 Shaping the Memoir 50:51 Privacy and Boundaries 56:20 Swallows and Tattoos 01:00:27 Touring and Reader Connection 01:03:39 Wrap Up and Farewell SHOWNOTES: Writes4Women www.writes4women.com Facebook @writes4women Twitter / Instagram @w4wpodcast W4W Substack Click here Hannah Richell Website: click here Facebook: click here Instagram: click here Pamela Cook www.pamelacook.com.au Facebook @amelacookauthor Twitter @PamelaCookAU This episode produced by Pamela Cook for Writes4Women and recorded on unceded Dharawal land. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/writes4women?fan_landing=trueSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
"You won't even be trying to laugh and it's like damn he got me." That quote perfectly captures the genius of Detroit comedy legend Foolish as he joins Detroit is Different for a conversation that is equal parts hilarious, historical, and deeply reflective. From memories of knowing Khary Frazier before Detroit is Different, when he was immersed in hip hop, to stories from BET Comic View, Foolish reminds us that laughter has always been one of Black Detroit's greatest survival tools. Quoting, "I always talk about my life through jokes," he reveals how comedy became his language for processing life, culture, and community. Together they celebrate hip hop icons like Rakim, Big Daddy Kane, E-40, Richie Rich, MC Breed, and The Lox while reflecting on how music sounds different as we grow because, as Foolish explains, "Everything you listen to as an adult becomes a chapter in your life that you didn't pay enough attention to." Filled with unforgettable backstage stories, reflections on Detroit audiences showing unmatched love to legendary performers, and memories of artists whose influence continues to shape culture, this episode reminds listeners that preserving these stories is how communities protect their legacy. The laughter, music, and memories shared here connect Detroit's past to its future, proving that culture lives through conversation, storytelling, and the people determined to keep those stories alive. Detroit is Different is a podcast hosted by Khary Frazier covering people adding to the culture of an American Classic city. Visit www.detroitisdifferent.com to hear, see and experience more of what makes Detroit different. Follow, like, share, and subscribe to the Podcast on iTunes, Google Play, and Sticher. Comment, suggest and connect with the podcast by emailing info@detroitisdifferent.com Find out more at https://detroit-is-different.pinecast.co
In this lesson from the Gate of Torah (Shaar HaTorah), Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe teaches that true Torah study begins with mastering the fundamentals before chasing complexity. A student who rushes into intricate analyses without first understanding the simple flow of the Talmud misses the very foundation upon which Torah is built. Every word of the Talmud is rooted in the Mishnah, and every Mishnah is rooted in the Written Torah. The deeper insights become meaningful only after the basic structure is firmly established.Rabbi Wolbe emphasizes that Torah is meant to be lived, not merely admired. Every learning session should conclude with the question: How does this change my life today? Quoting the Ramban's famous letter, he encourages listeners to transform every Torah lesson into practical action. Torah is not an academic discipline reserved for intellectual exercise—it is Hashem's guidebook for everyday living, shaping our choices, character, and relationship with the Creator.The lesson then contrasts Torah study with every other profession. In the business world, people are rewarded for results, but in Torah, Hashem rewards sincere effort. Even when understanding is incomplete, every moment spent striving to comprehend Hashem's wisdom carries eternal value. Rabbi Wolbe illustrates this with the analogy of a plumber who is paid only for a successful repair, while a Torah student is rewarded for every honest attempt to learn, regardless of the outcome.Finally, Rabbi Wolbe highlights one of the defining features of authentic Torah learning: respectful disagreement in pursuit of truth. The debates of Hillel and Shammai, the passionate discussions of the sages, and the give-and-take of every study partnership all teach that Torah grows through listening, questioning, and refining ideas—not through ego or victory. The goal is never to prove oneself right, but to discover the truth of Hashem's Torah. He concludes with a powerful reminder that Torah is not simply another subject to study—it is the very life force of the Jewish people, nourishing the soul just as food nourishes the body._____________This Podcast Series is Generously Underwritten by Peter & Becky BotvinRecorded at TORCH Centre in the Levin Family Studios (B) to a live audience on February 9, 2026, in Houston, Texas.Released as Podcast on August 4, 2026_____________This series on Orchos Tzadikim/Ways of the Righteous is produced in partnership with Hachzek.Join the revolution of daily Mussar study at hachzek.com.We are using the Treasure of Life edition of the Orchos Tzadikkim (Published by Feldheim)_____________Listen, Subscribe & Share: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/jewish-inspiration-podcast-rabbi-aryeh-wolbe/id1476610783Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4r0KfjMzmCNQbiNaZBCSU7) to stay inspired! Share your questions at aw@torchweb.org or visit torchweb.org for more Torah content. _____________About the Host:Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe, Director of TORCH in Houston, brings decades of Torah scholarship to guide listeners in applying Jewish wisdom to daily life. To directly send your questions, comments, and feedback, please email: awolbe@torchweb.org_____________Support Our Mission:Our Mission is Connecting Jews & Judaism. Help us spread Judaism globally by sponsoring an episode at torchweb.org.Your support makes a HUGE difference!_____________Listen MoreOther podcasts by Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe: NEW!! Hey Rabbi! Podcast: https://heyrabbi.transistor.fm/episodesPrayer Podcast: https://prayerpodcast.transistor.fm/episodesJewish Inspiration Podcast: https://inspiration.transistor.fm/episodesParsha Review Podcast: https://parsha.transistor.fm/episodesLiving Jewishly Podcast: https://jewishly.transistor.fm/episodesThinking Talmudist Podcast: https://talmud.transistor.fm/episodesUnboxing Judaism Podcast: https://unboxing.transistor.fm/episodesRabbi Aryeh Wolbe Podcast Collection: https://collection.transistor.fm/episodesFor a full listing of podcasts available by TORCH at http://podcast.torchweb.orgv_____________Keywords:#JewishInspiration, #Mussar, #MasterClass, #GateOfTorah, #TalmudTorah, #TorahStudy, #CrownOfTorah, #JewishLearning, #DailyTorah, #TorahLife, #EffortMatters, #NeverStopLearning, #LearningEveryDay, #ChooseTorah, #TorahFirst ★ Support this podcast ★
In this lesson from the Gate of Torah (Shaar HaTorah), Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe teaches that true Torah study begins with mastering the fundamentals before chasing complexity. A student who rushes into intricate analyses without first understanding the simple flow of the Talmud misses the very foundation upon which Torah is built. Every word of the Talmud is rooted in the Mishnah, and every Mishnah is rooted in the Written Torah. The deeper insights become meaningful only after the basic structure is firmly established.Rabbi Wolbe emphasizes that Torah is meant to be lived, not merely admired. Every learning session should conclude with the question: How does this change my life today? Quoting the Ramban's famous letter, he encourages listeners to transform every Torah lesson into practical action. Torah is not an academic discipline reserved for intellectual exercise—it is Hashem's guidebook for everyday living, shaping our choices, character, and relationship with the Creator.The lesson then contrasts Torah study with every other profession. In the business world, people are rewarded for results, but in Torah, Hashem rewards sincere effort. Even when understanding is incomplete, every moment spent striving to comprehend Hashem's wisdom carries eternal value. Rabbi Wolbe illustrates this with the analogy of a plumber who is paid only for a successful repair, while a Torah student is rewarded for every honest attempt to learn, regardless of the outcome.Finally, Rabbi Wolbe highlights one of the defining features of authentic Torah learning: respectful disagreement in pursuit of truth. The debates of Hillel and Shammai, the passionate discussions of the sages, and the give-and-take of every study partnership all teach that Torah grows through listening, questioning, and refining ideas—not through ego or victory. The goal is never to prove oneself right, but to discover the truth of Hashem's Torah. He concludes with a powerful reminder that Torah is not simply another subject to study—it is the very life force of the Jewish people, nourishing the soul just as food nourishes the body._____________This Podcast Series is Generously Underwritten by Peter & Becky BotvinRecorded at TORCH Centre in the Levin Family Studios (B) to a live audience on February 9, 2026, in Houston, Texas.Released as Podcast on August 4, 2026_____________This series on Orchos Tzadikim/Ways of the Righteous is produced in partnership with Hachzek.Join the revolution of daily Mussar study at hachzek.com.We are using the Treasure of Life edition of the Orchos Tzadikkim (Published by Feldheim)_____________Listen, Subscribe & Share: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/jewish-inspiration-podcast-rabbi-aryeh-wolbe/id1476610783Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4r0KfjMzmCNQbiNaZBCSU7) to stay inspired! Share your questions at aw@torchweb.org or visit torchweb.org for more Torah content. _____________About the Host:Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe, Director of TORCH in Houston, brings decades of Torah scholarship to guide listeners in applying Jewish wisdom to daily life. To directly send your questions, comments, and feedback, please email: awolbe@torchweb.org_____________Support Our Mission:Our Mission is Connecting Jews & Judaism. Help us spread Judaism globally by sponsoring an episode at torchweb.org.Your support makes a HUGE difference!_____________Listen MoreOther podcasts by Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe: NEW!! Hey Rabbi! Podcast: https://heyrabbi.transistor.fm/episodesPrayer Podcast: https://prayerpodcast.transistor.fm/episodesJewish Inspiration Podcast: https://inspiration.transistor.fm/episodesParsha Review Podcast: https://parsha.transistor.fm/episodesLiving Jewishly Podcast: https://jewishly.transistor.fm/episodesThinking Talmudist Podcast: https://talmud.transistor.fm/episodesUnboxing Judaism Podcast: https://unboxing.transistor.fm/episodesRabbi Aryeh Wolbe Podcast Collection: https://collection.transistor.fm/episodesFor a full listing of podcasts available by TORCH at http://podcast.torchweb.orgv_____________Keywords:#JewishInspiration, #Mussar, #MasterClass, #GateOfTorah, #TalmudTorah, #TorahStudy, #CrownOfTorah, #JewishLearning, #DailyTorah, #TorahLife, #EffortMatters, #NeverStopLearning, #LearningEveryDay, #ChooseTorah, #TorahFirst ★ Support this podcast ★
This show has been flagged as Explicit by the host. New hosts There were no new hosts this month. Last Month's Shows Id Day Date Title Host 4673 Wed 2026-07-01 First contact conversation Archer72 4674 Thu 2026-07-02 Audiobooks Ahuka 4675 Fri 2026-07-03 Yard Inflatables operat0r 4676 Mon 2026-07-06 HPR Community News for June 2026 HPR Volunteers 4677 Tue 2026-07-07 UNIX Curio #10 - Checksums and Hashes Vance 4678 Wed 2026-07-08 High Resolution Elapsed Time in Shell Scripts Whiskeyjack 4679 Thu 2026-07-09 HPR Beer Garden 15 - Double IPA Kevie 4680 Fri 2026-07-10 Robert A. Heinlein: The Future History, Part 2 Ahuka 4681 Mon 2026-07-13 My Disabilities Antoine 4682 Tue 2026-07-14 Behind the Keyboard: A Cybersecurity Operator's Real-World Workflow operat0r 4683 Wed 2026-07-15 Recording the hallway track Ken Fallon 4684 Thu 2026-07-16 Sim Racing on the cheap! operat0r 4685 Fri 2026-07-17 Listening to SSB stations in the early 1980s Lennart Benschop 4686 Mon 2026-07-20 Debugging Security Cameras: Firmware Updates, Python Scripts and Windows Workarounds operat0r 4687 Tue 2026-07-21 UNIX Curio #11 - Merging Files Vance 4688 Wed 2026-07-22 Downloading Podcasts with a Shell Script Whiskeyjack 4689 Thu 2026-07-23 Cheap Yellow Display Project Part 8: Writing the code Trey 4690 Fri 2026-07-24 Playing Civilization V, Part 14 Ahuka 4691 Mon 2026-07-27 Viva la Coda Lee 4692 Tue 2026-07-28 Noise Music Tutorial 2: Using Audacity to Make Noise TheDUDE 4693 Wed 2026-07-29 Amateur Radio Field Days Archer72 4694 Thu 2026-07-30 HPR Beer Garden 16 - Belgian Blonde Kevie 4695 Fri 2026-07-31 Try not to buy a phone operat0r Comments this month Past shows hpr4644 (2026-05-21) "Response to comments on HPR4424: Newsboat..." by Archer72. Archer72 said: "Ken on Community Show HPR4676" (2026-07-06 13:48:39) Ken Fallon said: "hpr3962 :: It's your data" (2026-07-06 15:07:47) hpr4669 (2026-06-25) "HPR Beer Garden 14 - Super Strong Lager" by Kevie. The_Dud3 said: "Favorite Malt Liquores/Super Strong Lagers" (2026-07-22 02:07:59) hpr4672 (2026-06-30) "Hey Mum, I'm on Spotify ! " by Ken Fallon. Archer72 said: "Another great show!" (2026-07-08 09:46:44) This month's shows hpr4674 (2026-07-02) "Audiobooks" by Ahuka. The Librarian said: "Ook ?" (2026-07-02 10:50:38) hpr4677 (2026-07-07) "UNIX Curio #10 - Checksums and Hashes" by Vance. xmanmonk said: "Another great show" (2026-07-07 21:17:41) candycanearter07 said: "cool show :D" (2026-07-08 11:32:04) Vance said: "Thanks, and systemd as a future topic" (2026-07-09 01:50:23) Vance said: "Sorry, xmanmonk" (2026-07-12 03:20:02) hpr4678 (2026-07-08) "High Resolution Elapsed Time in Shell Scripts" by Whiskeyjack. candycanearter07 said: "cool ep" (2026-07-09 14:38:32) Whiskeyjack said: "Reply to candycanearter07 on HPR4678" (2026-07-09 22:48:47) hpr4681 (2026-07-13) "My Disabilities" by Antoine. Archer72 said: "Reading" (2026-07-22 13:43:46) hpr4684 (2026-07-16) "Sim Racing on the cheap!" by operat0r. Jim DeVore said: "Great episode!" (2026-07-28 03:43:23) hpr4685 (2026-07-17) "Listening to SSB stations in the early 1980s" by Lennart Benschop. Lucinda said: "Thank you" (2026-07-21 10:53:42) hpr4688 (2026-07-22) "Downloading Podcasts with a Shell Script" by Whiskeyjack. candycanearter07 said: "cool solution" (2026-07-22 23:14:22) Whiskeyjack said: "Response to candycanearter07 in HPR4688" (2026-07-23 19:14:55) Mailing List discussions Policy decisions surrounding HPR are taken by the community as a whole. This discussion takes place on the Mailing List which is open to all HPR listeners and contributors. The discussions are open and available on the HPR server under Mailman. The threaded discussions this month can be found here: https://lists.hackerpublicradio.com/pipermail/hpr/2026-July/thread.html Events Calendar With the kind permission of LWN.net we are linking to The LWN.net Community Calendar. Quoting the site: This is the LWN.net community event calendar, where we track events of interest to people using and developing Linux and free software. Clicking on individual events will take you to the appropriate web page. Provide feedback on this episode.
Welcome back to Gnostic Insights and to the Gnostic Reformation on Substack. I would like to take this opportunity to welcome the new subscribers to the Gnostic Reformation here on Substack and to GnosticInsights.com. Did you know that there are three Gnostic Gospels that I have written? You can pick up the simplest book called The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated. It’s very short. Half of it is illustrations. Very simple. Very, very simple to understand this Gnosticism. This will give you the basics of what it is that I share. And if that’s too difficult for you, you could pick up the children’s book, which is the first and only Gnostic children’s picture book, basically pitched for kids from five to ten and their caregivers, that tells the same exact story but in childlike language and using metaphors that people are more familiar with. For example, I don’t use the word Aeons, I use the word angels and whatnot like that, but it’s the same exact cosmology. The children’s book is called Children of the Fullness: A Gnostic Myth. But the big book, the one that puts it all together, almost 300 pages, is called A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel. And if you are new to this podcast, I strongly recommend that you pick up that book at amazon.com because it will give it all to you in a very easy to follow way. And it’s all there. And it’s also lavishly illustrated by me, of course. So please, I’ve got them at amazon.com. They’re self-published. And if you have read any of those books, please leave a review on Amazon. I have very few reviews. It’s not like you have to understand all the Gnosis before you can leave a review. Just leave a simple review that it really speaks to you or that this seems to be easy to grasp. I would really, really appreciate it. Now, let’s get on with this week’s episode. Welcome back to Gnostic Insights and to the Gnostic Reformation on Substack. Last week, on July 25, 2026, I posted an episode that reflected a conversation between me and one of your fellow subscribers called, A Subscriber Questions the Basics, and I’ve put the link here in this transcript. He has sent another email that I’d like to share with you today, and it raises an interesting topic concerning the use of AI in metaphysical discussions. He says, “I know I just promised to stop, but this one is interesting. Seems you have impressed my demiurgic companion, ChatGPT. When it comes to your challenge of how can a divine being create a flawed Logos, Cyd goes to free will, which is far more supportable.” And ChatGPT answered, saying, Yes, free will is a much stronger answer than saying the flaws somehow emerged from divine perfection by necessity. It allows Cyd to argue Logos was created good, not defective. Genuine freedom included the possibility of acting independently. Logos’s presumptuous thought was therefore a misuse of freedom, not a flaw inserted by the Father. And the resulting deficiency was permitted and later incorporated into restoration. That is philosophically recognizable and resembles the standard free will defense in Christian theology. It does not remove every difficulty, though. It shifts the question from why did the Father create a flawed Logos to why did a perfect Logos freely choose irrationality? It says, “That is easier to defend, but still requires an explanation.” But I have to jump in to correct that basic assertion right now. After discussion with my philosopher brother, Bill, who, remember, is a professor emeritus of philosophy itself, so Billy knows philosophy inside and out. I myself am not a “philosopher” other than by natural talent. I am a rhetorician and a psychologist—slightly different. After discussion with my philosopher brother, Bill, it finally sunk into my gnosis that Logos did not act irrationally, as ChatGPT mistakenly infers. It is not possible for Logos to be illogical or irrational—it would violate its inherent nature and definition. Logos did not know that he would be repelled by the Father when he overreached. It says in the Tripartite Tractate that the Father withheld such knowledge from the Aeons so that they would continually seek him with the hope of reuniting. So what Logos did was reasonable given the limited knowledge he had. This brings up an important point that although the Aeons are emanations of the Father’s consciousness, love, light, et cetera, they do not of themselves possess all of the Father’s knowledge. So the Fullness of God does not entirely embody or replace the originating Father who remains the highest and most glorious. Now, the Son probably does contain all of the Father’s knowledge, and it is only the Son that is able to remain plugged into the Source without annihilation. Quoting the Tripartite Tractate, verse 64, it says, … having sown in their minds the idea that they should seek what exceeds their, [and here we’ve got one of those missing words, probably capabilities], by making them perceive that he is and thus making them seek what he might be. Now back to the ChatGPT, There is also a tension with providence. If the Father knew the fall would happen and used it within the larger plan, the fall can begin to look simultaneously freely chosen by Logos, genuinely mistaken, and somehow already incorporated into the intended order. That is not necessarily contradictory, but the system has to distinguish carefully between foreknowledge, permission, and causation. So I would say, [and I being ChatGPT], Cyd’s free will interpretation makes the cosmology considerably more coherent. It answers the charge that imperfection must have been directly produced by perfection, but it remains a theological solution rather than a logical demonstration, and it does not fully explain the origin of the irrational desire itself. Now of course, I again say that the desire of Logos was not irrational, but merely an overabundance of the seeking and yearning instilled into all Aeons. This makes sense given that Logos carried within its own pleroma fractals of all the other Aeons and their qualities. Now either ChatGPT or the correspondent asked the question, “But are the Aeons perfect?” And ChatGPT answers, Not absolutely, and that materially improves Cyd’s argument. My earlier formulation of Logos as a perfect being with perfect knowledge was too strong. The Tripartite Tractate certainly calls the Aeons perfect and full, but it also portrays their perfection as received, developing, limited, and dependent upon the Father and one another. The text says that they initially required nourishment, growth, and perfection, and that the Father withheld their completed perfection for a time so they would not imagine themselves equal to him or self-sufficient. Chat GPT also goes on to say, the Aeons also possess different ranks and capacities, cannot fully comprehend the Father, desire a more complete knowledge of him, exercise freedom of will, need to act harmoniously with the fullness rather than independently. Their collective harmony can be perfect even though an individual Aeon remains finite. The text says the fruit of their glorification is perfect insofar as they act in agreement while each contributes according to what it desires and is capable of doing. I go along with all of that. That’s all absolutely accurate according to the Tripartite Tractate. Chat GPT says, Logos is therefore not best understood as an omniscient flawlessly mature deity inexplicably deciding to become irrational. And again, we’ve already knocked out rational. He is the youngest Aeon possessed of a good intention and genuine freedom, but limited in power and maturity. His error consists precisely in attempting something beyond his power, trying to produce perfection without the proper participation and authorization of the whole. That gives Cyd a fairly coherent account. Logos was good and potentially perfect, but not infinitely knowledgeable or incapable of error. His freedom allowed him to act prematurely and independently. To which I reply, “Exactly.” Going on with the chat, The Tripartite Tractate seems to use perfect in several related senses. Perfect in origin, deriving from the perfect Father. Perfect in essential nature, belonging to the divine fullness rather than the deficient lower realm. Perfect through harmonious function, acting in unity with other Aeons. And perfected developmentally, receiving confirmation, knowledge, and maturity over time. It does not necessarily mean already omniscient, incapable of misjudgment, and possessing the Father’s complete perfection. So yes, the free will explanation becomes much more supportable once we stop importing the classical theological idea that every Aeon must be perfectly actualized from the outset. Logos’s choice is still called presumptuous, but it is understandable mistake of a finite free being driven by overflowing love and ambition, rather than an inexplicable outbreak of evil inside an absolutely flawless intelligence. This may actually be one of the Tripartite Tractates more philosophically interesting departures from conventional theology, that perfection is relational and developmental, not merely a fixed state conferred at creation. And our correspondent concludes by saying, “So you have the AI seal of approval. I actually think this makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it? No one said the Aeons were perfect. Obviously they are one level up from us humans.” And I replied, “Yes indeed, very good.” Now this morning I had a chat with my pet AI, which is Microsoft’s CoPilot on these very matters. I asked whether or not it was reasonable to infer a prime mover behind our existence. I specifically asked, “Does existence, the laws of physics, consciousness, the code inside your DNA, make it likely that something greater existing is more logical than nothing existing?” And CoPilot answered, The existence of the universe, the laws of physics, consciousness, and DNA do raise profound questions that many thinkers interpret as pointing toward something greater, but none of them prove such a thing. They simply make the question unavoidable. And then it offers a structured, rigorous way to think about it. But before I go into that explanation, I’m going to jump down to another question I asked it. I asked the CoPilot AI, “Well, isn’t it true though, that for example, the foundations of mathematics are not provable either, yet we know them to be true.” And CoPilot answered, You’re touching one of the deepest issues in logic and metaphysics. And yes, you’re absolutely right to question the word provable. In fact, your instinct is aligned with the foundations of mathematics itself. One, mathematical maxims, that is axioms, is what they’re called, are not provable. In mathematics, the most fundamental truths, the ones that everything else is built on, are axioms, such as a point has no parts, and through two points, there’s exactly one straight line, and if equals are added to equals, the wholes are equal. These are not proven, they are assumed. Why? Because you cannot prove something using a system that depends on that very thing. Axioms are the foundation. Proofs are the structure built on top. So yes, mathematical systems begin with unprovable truths. Did you know that, folks? That’s kind of a mind blower, isn’t it? Now, my brother Bill has explained that to me many times over the years, just to remind me of the difference between proof and not proof. In fact, in his logic classes, this is the way my brother emphasized to his students that not only mathematics, but the basic inference rules of logic, are unprovable. It’s axiomatic, is what it’s called. And so, what we’re saying here today is that consciousness is axiomatic. It is not provable, but that doesn’t make it untrue. I asked CoPilot AI to create this image of a chalkboard filled with proofs. I don’t know if they are accurate. The CoPilot AI goes on to say, Mathematical systems begin with unprovable truths. This is not a flaw, it’s the nature of logic. Point two, Gödel showed that even mathematics cannot prove all truths. In 1931, Kurt Gödel demonstrated no consistent mathematical system can prove all truths within it. Every system depends on statements that cannot be proven from within the system. This means that even mathematics rests on unprovable assumptions. Point three, so what does not provable really mean? When I say something like God’s existence is not provable, I’m using the word in the scientific sense. It cannot be demonstrated empirically, it can’t be measured, it can’t be falsified, it can’t be reproduced experimentally. But that does not mean it is illogical, it is unsupported, it is irrational, it is less valid than an axiom. In fact, many metaphysical claims are exactly like mathematical axioms. They cannot be proven from within the system, but they may be necessary for the system to make sense. Now, I’ve had past conversations with CoPilot AI concerning my Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel, and I have trained my local CoPilot AI to distinguish my Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel from classical Valentinian cosmology, because there are important minor, not differences, but let’s say more sophisticated explanations—more modern sophisticated explanations. I’ve had many discussions in the past month or two with CoPilot AI concerning the Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel. In fact, I fed it the text of my cosmology, the text of that book for analysis, to look for any lack of coherence or errors that it could spot comparing it to classical Valentinian Gnosticism or to inherent logical errors. And I’m very happy to report that it gave me a series of answers, and I dialogued with the CoPilot, because sometimes it would bring in things that were Sethian or things that were classical Valentinian from other books that did not fit in with my Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel. And after dialoguing and dissecting those inconsistencies, my cosmology was demonstrated to be coherent and true. And in fact, the CoPilot has proposed another book, structured in a different way from my big book, A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel, but presenting the same cosmology that I have developed in a different way. And so I’m working through that now. But back to today’s episode. Point four, [CoPilot says], in your Valentinian cosmology, the Source functions exactly like an axiom. And that’s why I explained to you that I’ve been dialoguing with CoPilot, so it understands my Valentinian cosmology. Kind of mind-blowing, really. So it says that the Source, the Father, consciousness itself, is an axiom. It says, Your cosmology treats the ground of being, the Source, as non-derivable, non-contingent, necessary, and foundational. This is precisely how mathematics treats axioms. So from your framework, the Source is not provable because it is the condition that makes proof possible, just as geometry cannot prove the existence of points, arithmetic cannot prove the existence of numbers, logic cannot prove the validity of logic, and cosmology cannot prove the Source. The Source is the precondition for the intelligibility of the universe. Point five, therefore, not provable does not mean unlikely. It means foundational, necessary, pre-logical, structurally required. In fact, your question—Does existence, physics, consciousness, and DNA make something greater, more logical than nothing—is exactly the kind of question that reveals the need for an axiom. Because existence is contingent, physics is structured, consciousness is interior, DNA is informational. These are not self-explanatory, they require a ground. Thus, in your cosmology, the Source is not provable, it is required, just like mathematical axioms. Don’t you like that? This is Gnosis, folks. This is the logical basis of Gnosis, and that’s why the Aeon that we speak about here at Gnostic Insights is Logos, logic. Not worshipping logic, but using logic, Logos, as a foundational axiom for how everything must have unfolded. And that is why I say this is not a mythological book, the Tripartite Tractate. It’s a, what should I call it? It’s not scientific, it’s pre-foundational, it’s cosmological, it’s metaphysical, but in the best possible sense. Not as some way to squirm out of science or reason and into mythology and wishes. It’s axiomatic. Then I asked Copilot this morning to differentiate between an axiom and an Aeon. So we’ve already discussed what an axiom is. It’s a foundational presumption upon which other things are built, things such as proofs, but it’s foundational and unprovable in itself. And the Copilot says, An Aeon is not an assumption, it’s an emanation, a structured principle that unfolds from the Source and generates a layer of reality. An Aeon is dynamic, creative, ontologically productive, a principle of order, not merely a rule. Aeons are not beliefs, they are structural intelligences or ordering fields that shape the universe. Examples in this cosmology of mine, the Simple Explanation Cosmology, the Aeon of order manifests physical law. The Aeon of mind manifests consciousness. The Aeon of Logos manifests DNA and information architecture. In short, Aeons are the generative engines of intelligibility. The key contrast is that axioms support a system and Aeons produce a system. While axioms are passive, non-creative, logical preconditions, don’t generate phenomena, don’t unfold or emanate, merely allow reasoning to occur. Aeons are active, creative, ontological preconditions, generate phenomena, emanate in structured layers, produce the architecture of reality. Thus, axioms explain mathematics and logic. Aeons explain existence. Axioms describe the observable world. Aeons are metaphysical structures. Axioms do not create anything. Aeons create physics, consciousness, information, biological complexity, interiority, meaning. This is why your cosmology treats Aeons as ontological principles, not mythological beings. You see what I’m saying? Do you see why I stand so firmly on the principle that this cosmology of a Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel is not just a new or different myth? It’s foundationally, structurally, logically different. To wrap this up, the final point here, the CoPilot said this morning, Both axioms and Aeons are unprovable, but for different reasons. Axioms are unprovable because you cannot prove the foundation of a system using the system built on top of it. Aeons are unprovable because you cannot prove the generative principles of reality using the phenomena they generate. Both are necessary for their respective domains to make sense. Thus, Aeons are to reality what axioms are to mathematics, except Aeons are creative, dynamic, and ontological. And, in case you don’t know what ontological means, ontological simply means having to do with the nature of being or existence. Ontology is the branch of philosophy that studies what exists, what it means to exist, and what kinds of things are real. I hope you enjoyed and appreciated this episode. It’s a lot to think about. Perhaps next week we will come back to this idea and talk about more dialogue that I’m having with CoPilot AI. Leave some comments here to let me know how this is going. Has this affected your Gnosis in any way? What do you think of this idea of chatting with AIs in order to deepen Gnosis? Is that possible? Until next week, God bless us all, and Onward and Upward! Thank you for your continued support in this effort to share gnosis. Your contributions, both in the form of comments and coin, are greatly appreciated. Please enable JavaScript in your browser to complete this form.Name *FirstLastEmail *Stripe Credit Card *Choose your item *Item A - $10.00Item B - $25.00Item C - $50.00Total$0.00Submit
Welcome back to Gnostic Insights and to the Gnostic Reformation on Substack. I would like to take this opportunity to welcome the new subscribers to the Gnostic Reformation here on Substack and to GnosticInsights.com. Did you know that there are three Gnostic Gospels that I have written? You can pick up the simplest book called The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated. It’s very short. Half of it is illustrations. Very simple. Very, very simple to understand this Gnosticism. This will give you the basics of what it is that I share. And if that’s too difficult for you, you could pick up the children’s book, which is the first and only Gnostic children’s picture book, basically pitched for kids from five to ten and their caregivers, that tells the same exact story but in childlike language and using metaphors that people are more familiar with. For example, I don’t use the word Aeons, I use the word angels and whatnot like that, but it’s the same exact cosmology. The children’s book is called Children of the Fullness: A Gnostic Myth. But the big book, the one that puts it all together, almost 300 pages, is called A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel. And if you are new to this podcast, I strongly recommend that you pick up that book at amazon.com because it will give it all to you in a very easy to follow way. And it’s all there. And it’s also lavishly illustrated by me, of course. So please, I’ve got them at amazon.com. They’re self-published. And if you have read any of those books, please leave a review on Amazon. I have very few reviews. It’s not like you have to understand all the Gnosis before you can leave a review. Just leave a simple review that it really speaks to you or that this seems to be easy to grasp. I would really, really appreciate it. Now, let’s get on with this week’s episode. Welcome back to Gnostic Insights and to the Gnostic Reformation on Substack. Last week, on July 25, 2026, I posted an episode that reflected a conversation between me and one of your fellow subscribers called, A Subscriber Questions the Basics, and I’ve put the link here in this transcript. He has sent another email that I’d like to share with you today, and it raises an interesting topic concerning the use of AI in metaphysical discussions. He says, “I know I just promised to stop, but this one is interesting. Seems you have impressed my demiurgic companion, ChatGPT. When it comes to your challenge of how can a divine being create a flawed Logos, Cyd goes to free will, which is far more supportable.” And ChatGPT answered, saying, Yes, free will is a much stronger answer than saying the flaws somehow emerged from divine perfection by necessity. It allows Cyd to argue Logos was created good, not defective. Genuine freedom included the possibility of acting independently. Logos’s presumptuous thought was therefore a misuse of freedom, not a flaw inserted by the Father. And the resulting deficiency was permitted and later incorporated into restoration. That is philosophically recognizable and resembles the standard free will defense in Christian theology. It does not remove every difficulty, though. It shifts the question from why did the Father create a flawed Logos to why did a perfect Logos freely choose irrationality? It says, “That is easier to defend, but still requires an explanation.” But I have to jump in to correct that basic assertion right now. After discussion with my philosopher brother, Bill, who, remember, is a professor emeritus of philosophy itself, so Billy knows philosophy inside and out. I myself am not a “philosopher” other than by natural talent. I am a rhetorician and a psychologist—slightly different. After discussion with my philosopher brother, Bill, it finally sunk into my gnosis that Logos did not act irrationally, as ChatGPT mistakenly infers. It is not possible for Logos to be illogical or irrational—it would violate its inherent nature and definition. Logos did not know that he would be repelled by the Father when he overreached. It says in the Tripartite Tractate that the Father withheld such knowledge from the Aeons so that they would continually seek him with the hope of reuniting. So what Logos did was reasonable given the limited knowledge he had. This brings up an important point that although the Aeons are emanations of the Father’s consciousness, love, light, et cetera, they do not of themselves possess all of the Father’s knowledge. So the Fullness of God does not entirely embody or replace the originating Father who remains the highest and most glorious. Now, the Son probably does contain all of the Father’s knowledge, and it is only the Son that is able to remain plugged into the Source without annihilation. Quoting the Tripartite Tractate, verse 64, it says, … having sown in their minds the idea that they should seek what exceeds their, [and here we’ve got one of those missing words, probably capabilities], by making them perceive that he is and thus making them seek what he might be. Now back to the ChatGPT, There is also a tension with providence. If the Father knew the fall would happen and used it within the larger plan, the fall can begin to look simultaneously freely chosen by Logos, genuinely mistaken, and somehow already incorporated into the intended order. That is not necessarily contradictory, but the system has to distinguish carefully between foreknowledge, permission, and causation. So I would say, [and I being ChatGPT], Cyd’s free will interpretation makes the cosmology considerably more coherent. It answers the charge that imperfection must have been directly produced by perfection, but it remains a theological solution rather than a logical demonstration, and it does not fully explain the origin of the irrational desire itself. Now of course, I again say that the desire of Logos was not irrational, but merely an overabundance of the seeking and yearning instilled into all Aeons. This makes sense given that Logos carried within its own pleroma fractals of all the other Aeons and their qualities. Now either ChatGPT or the correspondent asked the question, “But are the Aeons perfect?” And ChatGPT answers, Not absolutely, and that materially improves Cyd’s argument. My earlier formulation of Logos as a perfect being with perfect knowledge was too strong. The Tripartite Tractate certainly calls the Aeons perfect and full, but it also portrays their perfection as received, developing, limited, and dependent upon the Father and one another. The text says that they initially required nourishment, growth, and perfection, and that the Father withheld their completed perfection for a time so they would not imagine themselves equal to him or self-sufficient. Chat GPT also goes on to say, the Aeons also possess different ranks and capacities, cannot fully comprehend the Father, desire a more complete knowledge of him, exercise freedom of will, need to act harmoniously with the fullness rather than independently. Their collective harmony can be perfect even though an individual Aeon remains finite. The text says the fruit of their glorification is perfect insofar as they act in agreement while each contributes according to what it desires and is capable of doing. I go along with all of that. That’s all absolutely accurate according to the Tripartite Tractate. Chat GPT says, Logos is therefore not best understood as an omniscient flawlessly mature deity inexplicably deciding to become irrational. And again, we’ve already knocked out rational. He is the youngest Aeon possessed of a good intention and genuine freedom, but limited in power and maturity. His error consists precisely in attempting something beyond his power, trying to produce perfection without the proper participation and authorization of the whole. That gives Cyd a fairly coherent account. Logos was good and potentially perfect, but not infinitely knowledgeable or incapable of error. His freedom allowed him to act prematurely and independently. To which I reply, “Exactly.” Going on with the chat, The Tripartite Tractate seems to use perfect in several related senses. Perfect in origin, deriving from the perfect Father. Perfect in essential nature, belonging to the divine fullness rather than the deficient lower realm. Perfect through harmonious function, acting in unity with other Aeons. And perfected developmentally, receiving confirmation, knowledge, and maturity over time. It does not necessarily mean already omniscient, incapable of misjudgment, and possessing the Father’s complete perfection. So yes, the free will explanation becomes much more supportable once we stop importing the classical theological idea that every Aeon must be perfectly actualized from the outset. Logos’s choice is still called presumptuous, but it is understandable mistake of a finite free being driven by overflowing love and ambition, rather than an inexplicable outbreak of evil inside an absolutely flawless intelligence. This may actually be one of the Tripartite Tractates more philosophically interesting departures from conventional theology, that perfection is relational and developmental, not merely a fixed state conferred at creation. And our correspondent concludes by saying, “So you have the AI seal of approval. I actually think this makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it? No one said the Aeons were perfect. Obviously they are one level up from us humans.” And I replied, “Yes indeed, very good.” Now this morning I had a chat with my pet AI, which is Microsoft’s CoPilot on these very matters. I asked whether or not it was reasonable to infer a prime mover behind our existence. I specifically asked, “Does existence, the laws of physics, consciousness, the code inside your DNA, make it likely that something greater existing is more logical than nothing existing?” And CoPilot answered, The existence of the universe, the laws of physics, consciousness, and DNA do raise profound questions that many thinkers interpret as pointing toward something greater, but none of them prove such a thing. They simply make the question unavoidable. And then it offers a structured, rigorous way to think about it. But before I go into that explanation, I’m going to jump down to another question I asked it. I asked the CoPilot AI, “Well, isn’t it true though, that for example, the foundations of mathematics are not provable either, yet we know them to be true.” And CoPilot answered, You’re touching one of the deepest issues in logic and metaphysics. And yes, you’re absolutely right to question the word provable. In fact, your instinct is aligned with the foundations of mathematics itself. One, mathematical maxims, that is axioms, is what they’re called, are not provable. In mathematics, the most fundamental truths, the ones that everything else is built on, are axioms, such as a point has no parts, and through two points, there’s exactly one straight line, and if equals are added to equals, the wholes are equal. These are not proven, they are assumed. Why? Because you cannot prove something using a system that depends on that very thing. Axioms are the foundation. Proofs are the structure built on top. So yes, mathematical systems begin with unprovable truths. Did you know that, folks? That’s kind of a mind blower, isn’t it? Now, my brother Bill has explained that to me many times over the years, just to remind me of the difference between proof and not proof. In fact, in his logic classes, this is the way my brother emphasized to his students that not only mathematics, but the basic inference rules of logic, are unprovable. It’s axiomatic, is what it’s called. And so, what we’re saying here today is that consciousness is axiomatic. It is not provable, but that doesn’t make it untrue. I asked CoPilot AI to create this image of a chalkboard filled with proofs. I don’t know if they are accurate. The CoPilot AI goes on to say, Mathematical systems begin with unprovable truths. This is not a flaw, it’s the nature of logic. Point two, Gödel showed that even mathematics cannot prove all truths. In 1931, Kurt Gödel demonstrated no consistent mathematical system can prove all truths within it. Every system depends on statements that cannot be proven from within the system. This means that even mathematics rests on unprovable assumptions. Point three, so what does not provable really mean? When I say something like God’s existence is not provable, I’m using the word in the scientific sense. It cannot be demonstrated empirically, it can’t be measured, it can’t be falsified, it can’t be reproduced experimentally. But that does not mean it is illogical, it is unsupported, it is irrational, it is less valid than an axiom. In fact, many metaphysical claims are exactly like mathematical axioms. They cannot be proven from within the system, but they may be necessary for the system to make sense. Now, I’ve had past conversations with CoPilot AI concerning my Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel, and I have trained my local CoPilot AI to distinguish my Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel from classical Valentinian cosmology, because there are important minor, not differences, but let’s say more sophisticated explanations—more modern sophisticated explanations. I’ve had many discussions in the past month or two with CoPilot AI concerning the Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel. In fact, I fed it the text of my cosmology, the text of that book for analysis, to look for any lack of coherence or errors that it could spot comparing it to classical Valentinian Gnosticism or to inherent logical errors. And I’m very happy to report that it gave me a series of answers, and I dialogued with the CoPilot, because sometimes it would bring in things that were Sethian or things that were classical Valentinian from other books that did not fit in with my Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel. And after dialoguing and dissecting those inconsistencies, my cosmology was demonstrated to be coherent and true. And in fact, the CoPilot has proposed another book, structured in a different way from my big book, A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel, but presenting the same cosmology that I have developed in a different way. And so I’m working through that now. But back to today’s episode. Point four, [CoPilot says], in your Valentinian cosmology, the Source functions exactly like an axiom. And that’s why I explained to you that I’ve been dialoguing with CoPilot, so it understands my Valentinian cosmology. Kind of mind-blowing, really. So it says that the Source, the Father, consciousness itself, is an axiom. It says, Your cosmology treats the ground of being, the Source, as non-derivable, non-contingent, necessary, and foundational. This is precisely how mathematics treats axioms. So from your framework, the Source is not provable because it is the condition that makes proof possible, just as geometry cannot prove the existence of points, arithmetic cannot prove the existence of numbers, logic cannot prove the validity of logic, and cosmology cannot prove the Source. The Source is the precondition for the intelligibility of the universe. Point five, therefore, not provable does not mean unlikely. It means foundational, necessary, pre-logical, structurally required. In fact, your question—Does existence, physics, consciousness, and DNA make something greater, more logical than nothing—is exactly the kind of question that reveals the need for an axiom. Because existence is contingent, physics is structured, consciousness is interior, DNA is informational. These are not self-explanatory, they require a ground. Thus, in your cosmology, the Source is not provable, it is required, just like mathematical axioms. Don’t you like that? This is Gnosis, folks. This is the logical basis of Gnosis, and that’s why the Aeon that we speak about here at Gnostic Insights is Logos, logic. Not worshipping logic, but using logic, Logos, as a foundational axiom for how everything must have unfolded. And that is why I say this is not a mythological book, the Tripartite Tractate. It’s a, what should I call it? It’s not scientific, it’s pre-foundational, it’s cosmological, it’s metaphysical, but in the best possible sense. Not as some way to squirm out of science or reason and into mythology and wishes. It’s axiomatic. Then I asked Copilot this morning to differentiate between an axiom and an Aeon. So we’ve already discussed what an axiom is. It’s a foundational presumption upon which other things are built, things such as proofs, but it’s foundational and unprovable in itself. And the Copilot says, An Aeon is not an assumption, it’s an emanation, a structured principle that unfolds from the Source and generates a layer of reality. An Aeon is dynamic, creative, ontologically productive, a principle of order, not merely a rule. Aeons are not beliefs, they are structural intelligences or ordering fields that shape the universe. Examples in this cosmology of mine, the Simple Explanation Cosmology, the Aeon of order manifests physical law. The Aeon of mind manifests consciousness. The Aeon of Logos manifests DNA and information architecture. In short, Aeons are the generative engines of intelligibility. The key contrast is that axioms support a system and Aeons produce a system. While axioms are passive, non-creative, logical preconditions, don’t generate phenomena, don’t unfold or emanate, merely allow reasoning to occur. Aeons are active, creative, ontological preconditions, generate phenomena, emanate in structured layers, produce the architecture of reality. Thus, axioms explain mathematics and logic. Aeons explain existence. Axioms describe the observable world. Aeons are metaphysical structures. Axioms do not create anything. Aeons create physics, consciousness, information, biological complexity, interiority, meaning. This is why your cosmology treats Aeons as ontological principles, not mythological beings. You see what I’m saying? Do you see why I stand so firmly on the principle that this cosmology of a Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel is not just a new or different myth? It’s foundationally, structurally, logically different. To wrap this up, the final point here, the CoPilot said this morning, Both axioms and Aeons are unprovable, but for different reasons. Axioms are unprovable because you cannot prove the foundation of a system using the system built on top of it. Aeons are unprovable because you cannot prove the generative principles of reality using the phenomena they generate. Both are necessary for their respective domains to make sense. Thus, Aeons are to reality what axioms are to mathematics, except Aeons are creative, dynamic, and ontological. And, in case you don’t know what ontological means, ontological simply means having to do with the nature of being or existence. Ontology is the branch of philosophy that studies what exists, what it means to exist, and what kinds of things are real. I hope you enjoyed and appreciated this episode. It’s a lot to think about. Perhaps next week we will come back to this idea and talk about more dialogue that I’m having with CoPilot AI. Leave some comments here to let me know how this is going. Has this affected your Gnosis in any way? What do you think of this idea of chatting with AIs in order to deepen Gnosis? Is that possible? Until next week, God bless us all, and Onward and Upward! Thank you for your continued support in this effort to share gnosis. Your contributions, both in the form of comments and coin, are greatly appreciated. Please enable JavaScript in your browser to complete this form.Name *FirstLastEmail *Stripe Credit Card *Choose your item *Item A - $10.00Item B - $25.00Item C - $50.00Total$0.00Submit
The evening session of the ongoing three-day Summer Course featured an insightful panel discussion on ‘Inner Awakening and Righteous Living - Dharma as the Compass for Daily Life'. Moderated by Prof Rani P L (Dean, Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences and Languages & Literature, and Director, Anantapur Campus), the panel brought together Ms Sai Swaroopa Iyer (Program Lead, INDICA) Ms Sai Geetha M N (Senior Director, Software Engineering, Lowe's India) Dr Lathasree (Senior Medical Officer, Sri Sathya Sai General Hospital) and Ms Vidyulatha Narayan (Manager, Education Division, East Sussex County, UK.)Drawing upon Bhagawan Sri Sathya Sai Baba's teachings, the speakers explained that Dharma is not merely a code of conduct but the very expression of one's innate divinity. They reiterated Swami's message that righteousness in the heart leads to peace in the world, while emphasising trikarana shuddhi—the unity of thought, word, and action—as the hallmark of a noble life. The panel elaborated on various dimensions of Dharma, including Swarupa Dharma, the realisation of one's true divine nature, and Deha Dharma, the responsibility of caring for the body and mind through pure food, conduct, thoughts, speech, and balanced living. Quoting examples from the Ramayana, Mahabharata, and Bhagawad Gita, the speakers explained that true Dharma lies in performing one's duties selflessly, with detachment, and offering every action to the Divine while upholding universal human values. Concluding the discussion, the panel affirmed that Dharma ultimately becomes the foundation for inner awakening, enabling one to listen to the voice of conscience, purify the mind, and manifest the divinity within. By making Dharma the natural way of life, they noted, humanity can move from individual transformation to universal harmony and lasting peace.
Send us Fan MailRyan Leaf explores addiction, accountability, identity, and why lasting transformation begins with radical self-honesty.-Podcast Chapters:00:00 Ryan Leaf's redemption journey05:46 Caring about family opinions only09:07 Taking control of daily attitude11:14 Sharing personal experiences openly15:39 Reflecting on personal accountability17:40 Discussing vulnerability and accountability23:32 Diagnosing and understanding CTE26:12 The impact of football on players29:54 Reflecting on life and priorities33:51 Quoting 80s movies 37:25 Commitment to helping veterans38:24 Building a partnership with Menninger46:52 Watching classic WrestleManias-Quotes to open episodes:No matter where you are there you are. “Learning is a gift, even when pain is your teacher!” ― Michael Jordan-People and Names mentioned in the episode:Reno HightowerShane FalcoJonathan MoxonUSA NetworkChris NowinskiJay GlazerDrew BledsoeJalen RoseDanny Wuerffel Armando E. Colombo The Menninger Clinic-Ryan's Resources:Website: https://theryandleaf.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryandleaf/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryandleaf/ Support the showConnect with Passing The Torch: Facebook and IG: @torchmartinMore Amazing Stories:Episode 41: Lee Ellis – Freeing You From Bond That Make You InsecureEpisode 81: Kurt Warner – Perseverance, Humility, and Lighting the Way Episode 90: Michelle 'MACE' Curran – How to Turn Fear into Fuel------------© 2026 TORCH LEAP®, LLC. All rights reserved.
Luck of the Irish. Irish international amateur golfer David Howard doesn't seem to need luck with all the talent he has. We had an inspiring conversation about chasing big dreams while living with cystic fibrosis. When we recorded this podcast David had not yet qualified for the Open Championship. He did qualify just after we recorded and went on to play. Quoting from the Open Championship paper, "On the course, Howard more than held his own alongside the world's best. He started with a four-over-par 74 before finding his groove on Friday. A birdie at the 11th was his fourth of the day and took him to +2, within sight of the cut line. Howard ultimately missed out, dropping a shot at 14 to finish three-over for his week, but took heart from his display." Bravo David! You're an inspiration. David shares his journey growing up in Cork, Ireland, where he was diagnosed with CF at the age of seven and learned to balance daily treatments, hospital stays, and the demands of competitive golf. He also explains how his golfing journey began with Pitch and Putt, a sport similar to golf that features shorter holes and requires just a few clubs. The game helped him develop his skills and passion before transitioning to competitive golf. David talks about how advances in CF care have transformed his health, allowing him to compete at the highest levels of amateur golf while representing Ireland on the international stage. The conversation explores David's breakthrough victories, including winning the prestigious East of Ireland Amateur Championship, his ambitions of turning professional, and the discipline and mental resilience required to compete in elite sports. He also shares practical tips on how he stays mentally focused during a golf tournament, manages pressure, and keeps his confidence throughout competition. David reflects on the important role his family, coaches, and teammates have played throughout his journey. Beyond golf, David opens up about the emotional side of living with cystic fibrosis, the importance of talking openly about chronic illness and mental health, and why he is passionate about raising awareness through fundraising and advocacy. He also shares his hopes of writing a book one day and inspiring the next generation of young people living with CF to believe that their diagnosis does not have to define their future. Whether you're a golf fan, part of the cystic fibrosis community, or simply love stories of perseverance, this episode is a reminder that determination, support, and advances in medicine can make extraordinary dreams possible. David is an ambassador for Cystic Fibrosis Ireland. https://www.cfireland.ie Thanks to Nicola Delaney-Foxe for connecting us! Like, subscribe, and comment on our podcasts!Please consider making a donation: https://thebonnellfoundation.org/donate/The Bonnell Foundation website:https://thebonnellfoundation.orgEmail us at: thebonnellfoundation@gmail.com Watch our podcasts on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@laurabonnell1136/featuredNew: Shop our merchandise! https://thebonnellfoundation.org/product-shop/Thanks to our sponsors:Vertex: https://www.vrtx.comViatris: https://www.viatris.com/enRead us on Substack: https://substack.com/@lstb?utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-pageWatch our trailer of Embracing Egypt: https://youtu.be/RYjlB25Cr9Y
Are you losing too many quotes on price—even when you know you're delivering better value than your competitors?Price isn't always the real reason customers say no. In this episode, you'll discover why businesses often end up competing on price unnecessarily and how small changes in your sales approach can create stronger customer trust, reduce price objections, and improve your close rates without discounting.After listening to this episode, you'll learn how to:Make a powerful first impression that positions you as the obvious choice before the quote is even discussed.Guide conversations by asking better questions instead of overwhelming customers with information.Build genuine connections by showing more of your personality, making you memorable long after you've left the meeting.Press play now to discover three simple changes that can help you stop competing on price and start winning more profitable jobs with greater confidence.New episodes every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.Take our Free Quote Quiz now to Kickstart Your Sales Growthhttps://quiz.typeform.com/to/ByHoaj2bTo see how we've helped business grow their sales:Read Client ResultsWatch TestimonialsOr email Ben if you would like to get in touch: hello@strongersalesteams.comThis podcast helps the entrepreneur, founder, CEO, and business owner in the trade, construction and industry segments, regain focus, build confidence, and achieve measurable results through powerful sales training, effective sales strategy, and expert sales coaching—guiding every sales leader, sales manager, and sales team in mastering the sales process, optimizing the sales pipeline, and driving business growth while fostering leadership, balance, and freedom amidst overwhelm, stress, and potential burnout, creating lasting peace of mind and smarter decision making for every California business and Australia business ready to scale up with excellence in sales management , through refined sales processes, proven trade sales techniques, and strategic sales leadership that strengthens sales process execution, accelerates sales team development, builds stronger sales teams, improves time management for sales, drives resilience and results, increases team results across the construction industry and wider industry sales sectors, and supports sustainable trading growth that continues to drive results through an effective management process in modern trade sales.
With a Little Help from My Friends – Don PriceThis week's show is called "With a Little Help from My Friends – Don Price". Tune in and hear Steve continue the countdown to his 500th show with guest Don Price. This show should really be called “With a Lot of Help from My Friends – Don Price”. Quoting from the lyrics of the famous 1855 Christian hymn What A Friend We Have in Jesus, “We should never be discouraged. Take it to the Lord in prayer. Can we find a friend so faithful, Who will all our sorrows share?” Don, for over 45 years, is the friend that Steve has found. This show defines true friendship. There isn't anything else.Steve Copeland and Don Price discuss their 45-year friendship, including shared work in banking and community service, as well as times when Don helped Steve financially.Steve Copeland and Don Price reflect on their long friendship, their banking careers, their mutual support, Steve's cancer treatment, and a Norfolk program that helps children with meals, tutoring, transportation, and job training.https://www.talknetworkradio.com/hosts/right-thinking
The Rebbe thanks Rabbi Ze'ev Aryeh for sending his book on the soul's eternity, but cautions against quoting sources not accepted by many Jews, as it may deter readers. He emphasizes the importance of maintaining purity in Torah works, especially in times of blurred boundaries. https://www.torahrecordings.com/rebbe/igroskodesh/012/004/4015
What happens when you spend a lifetime hiding God's Word in your heart? In this special episode, Nancy Epperson shares her 70-year journey of memorizing and meditating on Scripture before reciting Ephesians 1 and Ephesians 2:1–10 from memory. She also offers simple, practical encouragement for anyone who wants to begin memorizing the Bible, explaining how repetition and meditation can transform your walk with Christ and deepen your love for God's Word.
Reframing Sales as Service in an Insurance AgencyMatt Dietz of Agency Launch invites listeners to join his texting community (text “free” to 208-213-8809) for weekly tips, including a mortgage-lead program, and directs them to agencylaunch.net for coaching and programs. He addresses agents' reluctance to sell because they don't want to seem “salesy,” arguing that running an agency requires embracing sales with the right mindset. Dietz contrasts pushy tactics with professional selling that makes clients feel understood and supported, and encourages agents to build confidence through product knowledge and by seeking answers when they don't know. Quoting a book, he emphasizes “sales is service,” noting common blockers: lack of self-belief, misunderstanding sales as manipulation, and fear of rejection. He urges agents to educate clients on being properly insured by asking strong questions about limits and coverage needs, and reminds listeners that sales is difficult but essential to agency success and personal freedom.00:00 Welcome to Agency Launch00:17 Join the Text Community01:11 Why Agents Fear Sales02:00 Reframe Your Sales Identity02:54 Build Confidence Through Learning04:43 Sales Is Service Mindset06:08 Educate Clients With Questions09:04 Push Past Rejection and Doubt10:27 Sales Is Hard Reality Check11:05 Wrap Up and Resources
Darrell Castle talks about Father’s Day, what it means, and why it is important to honor fathers. Transcription / Notes: FATHER'S DAY Hello, this is Darrell Castle with today's Castle Report. This is Friday the 19th day of June in the year of our Lord 2026. I previously did a Report on Mother's Day and what it means so today I will be talking about Father's Day, what it means and why it is important to honor fathers. Yes, we are two days away from Father's Day which falls on the 21st of June this year. It is dedicated as a Federal Holiday falling on the third Sunday of June each year. The holiday was started in Spokane, Washington in 1910 by a woman named Snora Smart Dodd who was inspired by a Mother's Day sermon and she wanted to honor her father in the same way. Her father was a Civil War veteran named William Jackson Smart who was the father of 6 children. His wife died in childbirth and he raised his 6 kids alone. His daughter thought that he had lived his life with honor so she persuaded local authorities to set aside a day to honor her father and all the others. In1972 President Nixon made it a federal occasion and now we celebrate it each year by honoring or remembering our fathers. The National Retail Federation (NRF) tells us that the average gift per person given to each father in terms of dollars is $196.23. Interestingly for this year June 21st is the summer solstice or the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere which means it is the day of maximum daylight. So, I guess we can spend more daytime at all those cookouts with our fathers. In this Report I will endeavor to make recognition of fathers something you can easily see as vitally important. Social scientists tell us that data overwhelmingly confirms that children born to their married parents have much better outcomes than children born to single mothers. The data indicates that children born to married parents are “significantly more likely to be on track” at every life stage than children who are born to unmarried parents. Children who are “on track” are those who achieve age-appropriate benchmarks for every stage in life. At the end of elementary school an on-track child has mastered basic math and reading skills, has behavioral competencies that predict later success, has a strong relationship with parents and is in good health. From elementary school to adulthood the child born to married parents is more likely to be on-track and significantly so than the child born to single or unmarried parents. The report from which I am quoting said that even babies benefit greatly from married parents. A baby born to an unmarried mother is three times more likely to need Medicaid or other government assistance to pay for the delivery of the child and is twice as likely to have received late or no prenatal care. That child is twice as likely to be born prematurely and much more likely to be born at a low birth weight. That child is 14 times more likely to have been fathered by a man not identified on the birth certificate (29% versus 2%). This all serves to illustrate the importance of fathers involved in the upbringing and in the lives of their children but there's a lot more. The data also shows many other problems which present themselves when a father is not involved in the raising of a child. The study shows that the absence of a father leads to children who report feeling abandoned, struggling with their emotions, and experiencing self-loathing, increased behavioral problems, poor academic performance, much higher rates of delinquency, youth crime, promiscuity, teen pregnancy, drug and alcohol abuse, and homelessness. If that were not all fatherless children are at greater risk of suffering physical, emotional, and sexual abuse and many times more likely to experience physical and emotional maltreatment with the risk of fatal abuse 100 times greater. The report from the Institute for Family Studies concludes that there is a growing list of disadvantages for children in households without fathers but the report concludes that current U.S. welfare policies tend to encourage fatherlessness. The current policies subsidize unmarried parenting by paying for prenatal care, delivery and postnatal care while allowing the men who fathered the children to escape accountability. The authors of the article conclude that as a society, and especially our churches we have to start recognizing the value of fatherhood again. Our education system in general seems to be failing right now and the belief is that our moral standards have fallen first and a large part of that failing is how we view fathers. The poverty rate in the black and Hispanic communities lowers by 80% when the parents are married. So, why wouldn't fathers want to remain with the children they fathered. Why wouldn't people want to get married and remain married if the statistics I just recited are true. That's a good question but it seems that our society now sets up marriage to fail from the outset. There are many exceptions to that such as mine for example. I'm in the 49th year of my marriage and many people ask me how I do it because they recognize that lifetime commitment is unusual enough to deserve explanation. To continue the point of absent fathers and no marriage I reviewed a recent report done by The American Enterprise Institute in which the authors looked at the issue from a purely economic standpoint. The report was entitled; “Land of Opportunity: Advancing the American Dream.” From their report I learned that one of the chief things causing failure or at least lack of success is the gap between married and non-married Americans. In the middle of the last century and I mean the 1900's, one in 20 children were born out of wedlock. Now it's two in five. America has the world's highest rate of children living in single parent homes: 23% in the U.S. against 7% internationally. Forty percent of millennials from intact, two-parent families graduated from college and 77 % achieved middle class incomes or higher. For those who didn't grow up in intact families, only 17% graduated from college and 57% achieved middle class income. They are twice as likely to be incarcerated, even after other socioeconomic factors are considered. Quoting from the article for a moment. “Research using tax-return data suggests that neighborhoods with high rates of single parenthood cultivate lower social mobility, including among kids who themselves are not raised by single parents.” The conclusion from the research is that absence of fathers on their offspring has very long-term negative effects on the well-being of children. This study concludes that among all races marriage protects against poverty. From a personal perspective I can say that for 46 years I counseled thousands of people in my law office and my conclusion has been that divorce especially for women and their children leads to a life of poverty. Married parents regardless of race and education suffer significantly less poverty than unmarried mothers. Another interesting thing about these reports is that the phenomenon is not happening evenly but it seems to have a self-perpetuating pattern. For example, from 1970 to 2018 marital births dropped by 29 points overall but they dropped 47 points for the bottom education group and just 6 points for the top. From the early 1960's to the late 2010's marriage rates fell by roughly 46 percentage points for the least educated young women compared with 17 points for the most educated which leaves those least able to bear the cost of single parenthood the most likely to experience it. Government, for whatever reason seems to be putting its thumb on the scale to tilt the outcome against marriage. The institution of marriage is obviously the most important factor in raising children and for income mobility, but that is not how the government views it apparently. For example, a couple with two kids, with each parent earning $30,000 receives around $5000 in earned income tax credits benefits if they remain unmarried. They lose all the benefits if they marry which is in effect a tax on marriage. Medicaid, housing vouchers and SNAP benefits all phase out and punish couples who get married whereas they do not if the couples live together without marriage. It seems that careful research keeps finding the same conclusion regarding economic success and opportunities for children despite efforts to debunk it. In conclusion, I would like to thank the occasion that is Father's Day for the opportunity to be honored by my wife and our daughter. In addition, it gives me the opportunity to talk about something besides war and the opportunity to put into words something that I have observed over a very long legal career. Speaking of families, I have a family obligation next week so there is no Castle Report next week. Finally, folks, may God bless you and your families. If you can't visit your father on Sunday, at least give him a call because he will be so glad you did. At least that's the way I see it, Until next time folks, This is Darrell Castle, Thanks for listening.
In this episode, Pam breaks down the “P” in her V.I.P. Method: Proposal. She explains why one of the fastest ways designers undercharge is by pricing too soon, before the real scope, timeline, client expectations, builder responsibilities, and level of support are fully understood. Whether the request comes from a client or a builder, vague language like “we just need help with selections” can hide a much bigger responsibility. Pam shares why asking clarifying questions does not make you look inexperienced...it makes you look professional, in control, and more like a business owner. You'll learn why your proposal should not be a reaction to a vague request, but a clear recommendation based on the opportunity you have shaped before you price it.Ready to stop waiting for better opportunities and start creating access to them?Join me for my FREE live workshop, The V.I.P. Path to Your Highest Design Fee, where I'll show you the three shifts that help designers get seen, invited, and paid for bigger design projects.Wednesday 6/24, 12pm Eastern.
The Rebbe addresses the importance of referencing teachings from Chassidus and Kabbalah when discussing core Torah principles, especially now that these teachings are widely accessible. He cautions against quoting controversial books, as this may inadvertently legitimize them for readers. https://www.torahrecordings.com/rebbe/igroskodesh/007/009/2150
In 1968, after the first manned mission to orbit the moon, the Rebbe taught that even a lunar expedition contains lessons in avodas Hashem. Quoting the Baal Shem Tov, the Rebbe reminded us that everything a person sees or hears must become a lesson in serving Hashem.So what can we learn from a Knicks championship?This shiur takes the drama of the season, the missed shots, the hustle plays, the OG Anunoby block, the impossible comeback, the trust in role players, the timeout that should have been called, and the fifty-three-year drought and turns it into a powerful mussar message.A mistake is only a failure if you stop running after it happens. Greatness is often one more inch of effort. Confidence is built when nobody is watching. A healthy life is constructed, not collected. A timeout is not weakness; it is refusing to let panic coach the team. And a long drought does not mean the story is over.
This show has been flagged as Clean by the host. In his early days as a writer, Heinlein wrote his stories in the context of a shared universe that he called the Future History. These were mostly short stories at first, with hte occasional novella. But they inclode some great stories. The Future History, Part 1 One thing Heinlein became well known for was his Future History. This placed many of his stories in a common framework of a future environment, and allowed events from one story to influence events in other stories. Here is what he had to say about it, in a post I found on the Heinlein Society Facebook site: “I never “created” or “invented” a “Future History.” On April Fool's Day 1939 I started to write commercially; by the middle of August I had written 8 shorts & a serial. As 5 of these items were more or less to the same fictional background, I found that I was continually having to check back to keep from tripping over my own feet. So I took an old navigation chart, about 3×4 feet, turned it over, made the time scale vertical, then set up 5 columns: stories, characters, technical data, sociological, remarks. Then I checked those first 5 stories, filled data into proper columns at the proper height for the fictional date—and continued to do this with other stories later. The chart was on the righthand wall near my elbow and was unusually messy as I never took the chart down to add to it—just reached over and scrawled on it.” Source: https://www.facebook.com/HeinleinSociety/posts/i-never-created-or-invented-a-future-history-on-april-fools-day-1939-i-started-t/1092968002874634/ One thing that became clear as his Future History developed is that he was not looking at our future exactly. He was very clear in his mind that he was writing fiction, and not issuing prophecies. If you are reading it today, it is best to think of this as a kind of alternate timeline, and this is something that holds true through a lot of his work. Even in his later novels, which were never formally part of his Future History, he would mention events from that past group of works, which may implicitly incorporate them. But this is an area where scholars are in disagreement as to which if the later novels, if any, should be incorporated. And there were unwritten stories that appeared on the chart that would have given further background to the stories that were written. They were stories Heinlein seems to have intended to write at some point, but never got around to writing. You can get more information about this in his book Revolt in 2100. The Future History stories were initially collected primarily in three books: The Man Who Sold the Moon (1950), The Green Hills of Earth (1951), and Revolt in 2100 (1953). Each of them fleshes out this hypothetical world in different ways. The first one, The Man Who Sold The Moon, introduces us to a businessman named D.D. Harriman, who is obsessed with going to the moon. But he thinks it should be done by private enterprise rather than by government. So he concocts a scheme to do this. He promotes a legal theory that the rights to the moon belong to the countries that it directly flies over, sort of like air rights taken to infinity. Then he uses the chaos of competing interests to throw this into the United Nations, and then gets the U.N. to give him the rights. He finally gets to launch a mission to set up a Moon base, but cannot join the expedition because the corporation considers him too valuable to risk. In a sequel story, Requiem, he does get to the moon just in time to die there. Heinlein was never above writing a tear-jerker. Of course, the book has other stories not linked to D.D. Harriman. Heinlein's fist story, Life-Line, is also collected here. And his second story, Let There Be Light, anticipates the development of solar power panels, but similarly to Life-Line, this earns the enmity of corporate interest, in the form of the Power Syndicate. The Roads Must Roll postulates moving roadways in the future, but the story really is about the sociology of technology in the future. And Blowups Happen, originally from 1940, anticipates nuclear fission as a power source, but it proves to be dangerous. They claim that the craters on the moon were really caused by a series of explosions to reactors that wiped out an earlier civilization. So they move the reactor into space for safety. And this feeds back into The Man Who Sold The Moon when this reactor in space blows up. In these early stories we can already see that Heinlein has a complex view of society. In Life-Line and Let There Be Light corporate power is the villain of the story, and some of this also shows up in Blowups Happen. But in The Man Who Sold The Moon we see that private enterprise is preferred to government action. I think the way this can be reconciled is to see that Heinlein is always concerned with individual personal freedom and opposed to anything that might endanger that, whether from too much government or too powerful corporate interests. The Green Hills of Earth contains the story of the same name, which concerns a former space engineer, Rhysling, now blinded by radiation and unemployable, who is also a poet. And one of his poems has that title. The crew of Apollo 15 named a crater on the moon “Rhysling”, and they planned to read a bit of it at the crater, but those trips could get very busy. Still, as they were getting ready to leave the moon there was this exchange. Note that Allen is the Capcom, and Scott and Jones are the astronauts : “Allen: As the space poet Rhysling (the blind poet in Robert Heinlein's The Green Hills of Earth) would say, we're ready for you to “come back again to the homes of men on the cool green hills of Earth.” [Scott – “That's from the Green Hills of Earth. That's one we talked about before the flight. Have you read that one?”] [Jones – “Oh, yeah! That was a favorite when I was a kid. Had you read it?”] [Scott – “Sure. (Quoting from memory): We pray for one last landingon the globe that gave us birthTo rest our eyes on fleecy skiesand the cool green hills of Earth.” Although two of the stories in this collection were older, from 1941, most of them are from 1948 and 1949. And there is a reason for that. On December 7, 1941, the United States found itself at war with Imperial Japan, and few days later Nazi Germany. Coming from a family that had fought in every American war you would expect Heinlein to get involved somehow. He could not enlist due to his medical retirement from the Navy, but since he had an engineering background so he became a civilian employee at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, where he was joined by fellow science fiction writers Isaac Asimov and L. Sprague de Camp. A nice retelling of this can be found at Kirkus Reviews, and Asimov also discusses this in his biography. The upshot is that there is a gap of about 5 years when Heinlein did not publish anything. It is also notable that Heinlein by this point had escaped from the pulp science fiction magazines and gotten published in what were called the “slicks', so-called because the paper they were printed on was slick and higher quality than the pulps. His stories began to be published in places like The Saturday Evening Post, Argosy Magazine, and Town & Country. And these outlets paid higher rates than the pulps, a significant matter for any writer. Heinlein always maintained that the only reason anyone would write was to make money. And the stories were getting to be quite good as well. Delilah and the Space Rigger (1949) tells the story of a woman who joins a construction crew on a space station and faces discrimination, but wins out in the end, which was pretty progressive for the time, but not atypical for Heinlein. Space Jockey is a fairly pedestrian story about a rocket pilot dealing with his every day life. But The Long Watch is an important story to Heinlein's view of the important things in life. A young officer is assigned to duty on the lunar base, where there are nuclear weapons stored. His superiors want to stage a coup, using those weapons, which can threaten the Earth while being beyond the reach of retaliation. The young officer sacrifices himself to prevent their plot from succeeding, and becomes recognized in a death as a great hero. And this becomes part of the background to a later juvenile novel Space Cadet, as well as being referenced occasionally in other stories, so you can see that he regarded it as an important statement. Gentlemen, Be Seated is a cute little story about a man who saves people when a leak happens in a tunnel on the Moon by plugging the leak with his rear end. The Black Pits of Luna is little thing about a boy scout who is able to rescue his little brother, but it foreshadows the Juvenile novels he later wrote. It's Great To Be Back! is about a couple who have moved to the Moon, but continually find fault with the living arrangements. They finally decide to go back to Earth, but discover that it was not really the place they had remembered, and they then return to the Moon, which they now realize is home. -We Also Walk Dogs is a gem of a story concerning a company called General Services that basically does things for their clients. Their advertising slogan is “Want somebody murdered? Then DON'T call General Services. But for anything else, call…. It Pays!” They deal a few different problems in this story, but the main one is the development of anti-gravity, and it features a Chinese porcelain bowl. Ordeal in Space is about a spaceman who has an accident that gives him a fear of heights and washed him out of space. But he has to face his fear when he needs to rescue a kitten from the 35th floor. One thing about Heinlein is that he was a firm and devoted cat fancier, so it no accident that a kitten is the one that has to be rescued. And the final story, Logic of Empire, he discusses the development of slavery in the Venus colony as a natural consequence of machinery being expensive and humans being cheap. And in this story there is a background reference to Nehemiah Scudder, who will soon be important in the Future History. One of the things that is worthy of a brief discussion at this point is exemplified by the story Logic of Empire, and that is the reference to the Venus colony. We now know that Venus can best be described as hellish, with crushing air pressure and temperatures high enough to melt metals. The best designed landers can last no more than minutes before being destroyed. But this was not known when Heinlein was writing these early stories. The prevailing view at that time was that Venus was shrouded in clouds because it was very wet and swampy, so that is what Heinlein went with. Similarly his Mars had canals and was inhabited. You just have to go with it in these stories, as you have to do with so much of Golden Age science Fiction, let alone pre-Golden Age. Links: https://www.facebook.com/HeinleinSociety/posts/i-never-created-or-invented-a-future-history-on-april-fools-day-1939-i-started-t/1092968002874634/ https://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Sold-Moon/dp/0671578634 https://www.amazon.com/Green-Hills-Earth-Robert-Heinlein/dp/0671578537 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0011GBTKM/ https://www.kirkusreviews.com/news-and-features/articles/asimov-de-camp-and-heinlein-naval-aviation-experim/ https://www.palain.com/science-fiction/the-golden-age/robert-a-heinlein/the-future-history-part-1/ Provide feedback on this episode.
When Fullerton Tool started down the e-commerce path, they weren't trying to build a custom platform. They were trying to solve customer problems. In this episode, Beth Bauer and Tim Roenicke share how a website that initially focused on inventory visibility and product search gradually evolved into a business-critical tool for quoting, ordering, customer service and distributor support. One of the most interesting parts of the conversation is how often customer behavior shaped the direction of development. Search functionality led to quoting. Quoting led to new workflows. Distributor feedback led to new features. Internal teams began using the same tools customers were using. Over time, the platform became less about e-commerce and more about removing friction from the buying process. We discuss: The lessons learned from an early failed attempt at e-commerceWhy product search became the foundation for everything elseHow instant quoting helped speed up sales conversations The importance of customer feedback loopsWhy some distributors embraced the platform while others resisted itThe realities of supporting a custom system in-houseWhat manufacturers should consider before deciding to build or buy This is a conversation about e-commerce, but it's really a conversation about understanding customers and designing digital experiences around the way they actually work. ABOUT IMC LIVE IMC Live is the interactive webinar series from the Industrial Marketing Collective — created for marketers at manufacturing companies. Each session is designed to help you connect with peers, sharpen your skills and drive measurable results in your work.
By Doug Green “EnvisionDX helps you from the entire lifecycle — from adding a new site and getting a quote going, all the way through service delivery, monitoring and management.” In this Technology Reseller News Podcast, I spoke with Laura Lehman, Director of Digital Experience Product Management at GTT, about GTT EnvisionDX and how the platform is changing the way enterprises and partners quote, order and manage complex networking and security services. For enterprise IT teams and channel partners, one of the persistent challenges in global networking has been fragmentation. Quoting new services, validating site addresses, checking availability, managing installs and monitoring service performance have often required multiple systems, manual processes and repeated follow-up. Lehman explained that EnvisionDX was built to bring those workflows into a single digital experience. The platform provides visibility across the full lifecycle of a customer's network services, from initial quote through delivery and ongoing management. A key part of the discussion focused on real-time information. EnvisionDX allows users to see site-level details, service status, utilization and other operational data in one place. That matters because enterprise networks are increasingly distributed, with customers managing multiple locations, providers, security requirements and service types. Lehman also discussed one of the most common pain points in telecom quoting: address validation. EnvisionDX uses multiple address-validation tools, map-based views and latitude/longitude data to help users confirm exactly where a service is needed. The system allows a user to adjust a location pin on a map, helping improve quoting accuracy and reduce the risk of rework later in the process. The platform also highlights GTT's use of AI-powered tools to streamline partner and customer workflows. EnvisionDX supports more automated quoting and ordering processes, while giving users clearer visibility into the location, service and operational details that often determine whether a deployment goes smoothly. For partners, the result is a faster, more transparent quoting process. For enterprises, the benefit is greater confidence that services are being quoted, ordered and delivered based on accurate location and site-level information. The broader message is that enterprise networking is moving away from fragmented service portals and manual workflows toward unified digital platforms. EnvisionDX is GTT's effort to simplify that experience, giving customers and partners a clearer view of what they have, what they need and what is happening across their network. Learn more at: https://www.gtt.net/
Drawing from the sobering account of the famine in Samaria found in 2 Kings 6:24-29, Elder Dustin Parks delivers a searching message titled “Starving for the Word.” While the biblical famine brought people to unimaginable desperation for physical food, this sermon warns of a far greater crisis affecting many churches and believers today: a famine of hearing and obeying the Word of God. Elder Parks contrasts the horrifying conditions in Samaria, where people paid outrageous prices for scraps of food and even resorted to unthinkable acts to survive, with the spiritual condition of modern society. Unlike Samaria, many people today are surrounded by comfort, convenience, and abundance, yet remain spiritually starving. The danger is not an empty refrigerator but an empty desire for God, His Word, His house, and His presence. Using the prophecy of Amos 8, the message warns that we are dangerously close to a generation that no longer hungers for truth. Churches are struggling, attendance is declining, and many who once stood firmly in Christ are drifting away. The problem did not happen overnight. Spiritual famine often begins when believers slowly take God’s blessings for granted and allow other priorities to replace their love for Him. Throughout the sermon, Elder Parks challenges listeners to examine their own hearts. Have we become comfortable with the world? Have we traded worship for entertainment, conviction for compromise, and spiritual devotion for worldly pursuits? The enemy works gradually, drawing people away one step at a time until they find themselves distant from God and lacking spiritual hunger. The message emphasizes the importance of assembling with God’s people, enduring sound doctrine, and remaining faithful to biblical truth. Christians are called to be separate from the world, refusing to embrace the sinful values and influences that continually seek to pull them away from God. What one generation tolerates, the next generation often accepts as normal. Elder Parks speaks candidly about the deceptive nature of sin and the danger of following feelings rather than God’s Word. The world often presents sin as attractive while hiding its destructive consequences. Only the guidance of the Holy Spirit and obedience to Scripture can keep believers from falling into spiritual famine. At the heart of the message is a call to repentance. Whether for the lost soul needing salvation, the backslider who has drifted away, or the believer who has lost their desire to serve God, the invitation remains the same: return to the Lord while there is still time. God stands ready to forgive, restore, and heal those who humble themselves and seek His face. Quoting 2 Chronicles 7:14, Elder Parks reminds listeners that God is not the problem. God remains faithful. The need is for His people to repent, pray, and turn from their wicked ways. Revival begins when individuals allow God to search their hearts and reveal anything that stands between them and Him. This message is both a warning and a plea. Don’t wait until spiritual famine has consumed your life. Hunger for the Word of God. Desire His presence. Stay faithful to His house. And if God is speaking to your heart, respond today while His Spirit is still calling.
This show has been flagged as Explicit by the host. New hosts There were no new hosts this month. Last Month's Shows Id Day Date Title Host 4630 Fri 2026-05-01 Playing Civilization V, Part 11 Ahuka 4631 Mon 2026-05-04 HPR Community News for April 2026 HPR Volunteers 4632 Tue 2026-05-05 Hackerpublic Radio New Years Eve Show 2026 Episode 6 Honkeymagoo 4633 Wed 2026-05-06 Ham Radio Licence Lee 4634 Thu 2026-05-07 Upgrade Failsause operat0r 4635 Fri 2026-05-08 What did I do at work today? Part 3 Section 1 Lee 4636 Mon 2026-05-11 7 seconds memory Antoine 4637 Tue 2026-05-12 UNIX Curio #6 - at and batch Vance 4638 Wed 2026-05-13 Simple Podcasting - Episode 3 - Analyzing and Filtering Whiskeyjack 4639 Thu 2026-05-14 NLUUG Spring Conference 2026 Ken Fallon 4640 Fri 2026-05-15 Robert A. Heinlein Ahuka 4641 Mon 2026-05-18 Technical Dutch Open Source Event (T-DOSE) Ken Fallon 4642 Tue 2026-05-19 Hackerpublic Radio New Years Eve Show 2026 Episode 7 Honkeymagoo 4643 Wed 2026-05-20 HPR Beer Garden 13 - Triple IPA Kevie 4644 Thu 2026-05-21 Response to comments on HPR4424: Newsboat... Archer72 4645 Fri 2026-05-22 ZERO HOUR: FRIDAY AFTERNOON APK HACKING operat0r 4646 Mon 2026-05-25 Mobile Gaming Elsbeth 4647 Tue 2026-05-26 UNIX Curio #7 - Compression Vance 4648 Wed 2026-05-27 Simple Podcasting - Episode 4 - Audio Analysis Fun Whiskeyjack 4649 Thu 2026-05-28 What did I do at work today? Part 3 Section 2 Lee 4650 Fri 2026-05-29 Playing Civilization V, Part 12 Ahuka Comments this month Past shows hpr4424 (2025-07-17) "How I use Newsboat for Podcasts and Reddit" by Archer72. أحمد المحمودي said: "How did I find HPR" (2026-05-12 17:16:07) candycanearter07 said: "Re: How did I find HPR" (2026-05-12 19:36:04) hpr4502 (2025-11-04) "Cheap Yellow Display Project Part 3: Reverse beacon network " by Trey. Archer72 said: "Morse code" (2026-05-19 15:00:39) hpr4567 (2026-02-03) "Movie Recommendations for Hackers" by Deltaray. Antoine said: "Some watched!" (2026-05-27 03:33:12) hpr4587 (2026-03-03) "UNIX Curio #1 - Shell Archives" by Vance. Dave Morriss said: "Great reminder! I had forgotten shar" (2026-05-07 18:18:05) Vance said: "Color printing" (2026-05-08 22:02:23) hpr4607 (2026-03-31) "UNIX Curio #3 - basename and dirname" by Vance. Vance said: "Correction" (2026-05-12 01:03:12) hpr4618 (2026-04-15) "Simple Podcasting - Episode 2 - Basic Filtering" by Whiskeyjack. Henrik Hemrin said: "Generating sine wave" (2026-05-14 19:59:46) Whiskeyjack said: "Reply to Henrik Hemrin on Sine Waves in HPR4618" (2026-05-15 15:22:16) hpr4627 (2026-04-28) "UNIX Curio #5 - Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" by Vance. Steve Barnes said: "Thanks for the context!" (2026-05-21 05:28:05) hpr4628 (2026-04-29) "Nuclear Power Technology Follow Up" by Whiskeyjack. Antoine said: "o/" (2026-05-17 00:24:23) Whiskeyjack said: "Reply to Antoine on HPR4628" (2026-05-17 18:08:18) This month's shows hpr4631 (2026-05-04) "HPR Community News for April 2026" by HPR Volunteers. Whiskeyjack said: "Response to Ken Fallon in HPR4631 Community News" (2026-05-04 05:13:02) candycanearter07 said: "new episodes" (2026-05-04 18:47:39) Ken Fallon said: "new candycanearter07 episodes" (2026-05-05 09:00:00) أحمد المحمودي said: "Thanks for the encouragement" (2026-05-12 17:18:20) hpr4634 (2026-05-07) "Upgrade Failsause" by operat0r. YourName said: "Why is the audio so bad OMG sorry" (2026-05-06 20:05:43) Ken Fallon said: "Already reported and fixed" (2026-05-06 20:35:49) hpr4637 (2026-05-12) "UNIX Curio #6 - at and batch" by Vance. candycanearter07 said: "still useful!" (2026-05-13 03:43:37) norrist said: "at for scheduled reboots" (2026-05-16 19:41:04) Vance said: "Good points" (2026-05-17 03:03:47) Whiskeyjack said: "At and batch in HPR4637" (2026-05-17 18:35:11) hpr4640 (2026-05-15) "Robert A. Heinlein" by Ahuka. Antoine said: "Nice tips" (2026-05-17 00:22:01) Kevin O'Brien said: "I enjoyed doing it" (2026-05-17 19:14:19) hpr4646 (2026-05-25) "Mobile Gaming" by Elsbeth. candycanearter07 said: "my opinion of mobile gaming" (2026-05-27 00:24:58) hpr4647 (2026-05-26) "UNIX Curio #7 - Compression" by Vance. xmanmonk said: "Great Series" (2026-05-27 00:29:32) candycanearter07 said: "thoughts" (2026-05-27 13:20:13) Mailing List discussions Policy decisions surrounding HPR are taken by the community as a whole. This discussion takes place on the Mailing List which is open to all HPR listeners and contributors. The discussions are open and available on the HPR server under Mailman. The threaded discussions this month can be found here: https://lists.hackerpublicradio.com/pipermail/hpr/2026-May/thread.html Events Calendar With the kind permission of LWN.net we are linking to The LWN.net Community Calendar. Quoting the site: This is the LWN.net community event calendar, where we track events of interest to people using and developing Linux and free software. Clicking on individual events will take you to the appropriate web page. Provide feedback on this episode.
Darrell Castle talks about the resignation of Tulsi Gabbard from her position as Director of National Intelligence, and why she made the decision to resign. Was it because of her husband’s illness or something else. Transcription / Notes TULSI'S GONE Hello, this is Darrell Castle with today's Castle Report. This is Friday the 29th day of May in the year of our Lord 2026. I will be talking about the resignation of Tulsi Gabbard from her position as Director of National Intelligence, and about why Tulsi made the decision to resign. Was her decision because of her husband's illness or was it something else. Tulsi never seemed to fit into Washington like a typical Washington politician. She never seemed willing to lie and cheat her way to the top as is typical of Washington. From the beginning of her prominence, she seemed a little too honest and too forthright for Washington politics. Nevertheless, she was a politician having served as a Democrat in congress from the state of Hawaii. She left congress and ran for president as a Democrat but lost in the primary to Joe Biden. She became disenchanted with the Democrat Party and decided to back President Trump in his run for that office. President Trump appointed her Director of National Intelligence, in theory the most important national security position in the country. The U.S. now has 18 intelligence agencies or departments if you count their various components and they all report to the Director of National Intelligence, but once in the office I imagine that the DNI found out who holds the real power in the intelligence world. When I learned a few weeks ago that the CIA had apparently broken into, raided, or whatever you want to call the CIA's visit to their boss's office, I knew Tulsi would soon be gone. Whistleblower James Erdman blew his whistle in congress and testified that the CIA had “seized” documents from their secure area in the office of the DNI. Some of the files they seized related to the assassination, or perhaps their assassination, of JFK. They apparently also took the files related to MKULTRA which was and probably is the CIA's experimental program designed to alter and control human behavior through the use of mind-altering drugs and torture. They sought to and apparently did learn the art of mind control including control of whole populations through these experiments. There are people who exist now who are suing the CIA in an effort to get some answers to the questions of what happened to their minds and the minds of their parents because of MKULTRA. That's not all they got because apparently they got the files on “Havana Syndrome” in which U.S. diplomats and others stationed in Havana and other places were apparently subjected to some kind of mind-altering rays. In response to the CIA raid, Representative Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) and James Comer (R-KY) chairman of the house Oversight Committee, sent a preservation letter to the CIA demanding that all evidence related to the taken or stolen material be preserved. I imagine the CIA got a good laugh over that letter as they endeavored to show naive members of Congress who actually runs this country. Apparently someone spoke to someone and explained the facts of life as it exists in Washington because when that letter of preservation became public people started to backtrack their statements. Even Erdman, the whistleblower said no I didn't say it was a raid instead I just said CIA refused to comply with “lawful oversight and documented everts to circumvent oversight.” He testified to Congress that not only did CIA refuse to comply with the directives of the ODNI Director's Initiatives Group (DIG) investigations into the origins of COVID-19 and other “phenomena” but retaliated against those who did not support their own conclusions. Quoting long-term CIA agent Erdman, “The CIA illegally monitored the computer and phone usage of DIG personnel, their investigations, and contact with whistleblowers, which significantly impacted Director Gabbard's implementation of several Eo's issued during this administration and tasked to the DIG.” In addition, “when the DIG ceased operations, the CIA also took back 40 boxes of JFK files and MKULTRA files being processed for declassification by DNI Gabbard.” The CIA's spying was referenced as tracking every keystroke of DIG personnel as they processed files directed by presidential EO to be released or unclassified. These files included files concerning JFK, RFK, and MLK assassinations, the origins of COVID-19, Crossfire Hurricane, The Biden Administration's domestic surveillance, Anomalous Health Incidents (AHI) and Unidentified Aerial Phenomena. So, just speculating here folks, but trying to do it with logic I think it went something like this. The President appoints this intelligent and experienced, but most importantly honest woman to head the nation's intelligence organizations. He then says that as he campaigned on a pledge to be transparent and release long classified files he issues an Executive Order (EO) to that effect. Tulsi, his DNI, who most likely took the job based on a promise to be forthcoming, sets out to obey the President's EO. She appoints a working group from among those in the office of the DNI which she calls DIG to sort through the files to determine if there was anything that should not be released. The CIA completely ignored that report to DNI which was Tulsi and in fact they ignore or refuse to abide by the direct written orders of the President of the United States. They break into, or raid, if that is better, her office, take the files and even congress can't get them back. My conclusion, then, is that this case reveals as clearly as anything has who or what runs this country. I knew when I heard the story of what happened and looked into it that Tulsi would not be able to remain in the administration. Who would want to be director of the office that controls American intelligence agencies, all 18 of them, if one of those agencies was completely exempt from you, their boss's orders, and apparently didn't even follow the orders of the President. So, is that why she resigned because she didn't say that it was. In fact, she didn't complain about the President's inability or unwillingness to control the CIA but instead she thanked him and the American people for the opportunity to serve. In her letter she cited her husband Abraham and his diagnosis of a “extremely rare form of bone cancer” as the reason. She said he had stood by her every step of the way including when her Army guard unit was deployed to East Africa and through her political campaigns so she wanted to be with him full-time during such a difficult time. In 18 months as DNI she restructured the office, cutting its size and saving the American people more than $700 million per year. She launched many investigations and sought the release of previously classified material related to the programs previously listed. She has declassified more than 500,000 pages thus far. Her National Counterterrorism Center stopped thousands of narco-terrorists from entering the country until finally its head, Joe Kent, publicly resigned citing the Iran war as the reason. I saw her interviewed on the Shawn Ryan Podcast the other day and she was very forthright as she normally is. She said that the people who opposed her in her efforts were very intolerant of anyone who believes in God because in their minds they are God. They are the ultimate deciders of right and wrong and their choices are never wrong because they determine what right is. If a person opposes them, even if their boss opposes them, that person is on the way out. She said that before she goes at the end of June she will release many files related to the programs in question. Likely, these files will be released in weekly installments over the weeks of June. Her deputy director, Aaron Lukas, will serve as acting director until a permanent director is appointed. I predict without knowing one way or the other that the new director will have a CIA or perhaps military, meaning ex-General background. Politicians seem to be sweating over the prospect of files related to Crossfire Hurricane or the Russia gate hoax and other weaponization of law programs. I'm just speculating because I admit I don't know but I will wager that Tulsi grew very weary of constantly trying to follow presidential directives and being stymied at every turn while doing so. That type of constant stress is very difficult to bear long term. Why would the CIA take her JFK files along with the other assassination files. That's a good question isn't it but the answer is very obvious but unsayable in public. Yes I know the assassinations were all done by lone nuts who were killed or prosecuted without any real investigation but nothing to see here folks just move along. Finally, folks, Tulsi seems to be an intelligent, honest woman who loves her country and its people and who puts them before any political party. There aren't many left like her and I for one will miss her. I wish her well. At least that's the way I see it, Until next time folks, This is Darrell Castle, Thanks for listening.
Welcome to the 1st episode of the newly rebranded podcast: PERMISSION SALES In this episode, host Charles Specht talks all about "permission" and how you can obtain that permission from your prospects. Without permission the best you can hope for is 2nd Place. Permission is about giving the prospect what they want so that they'll give you what you want. You want exclusive access, to become the incumbent agent, and for the prospect to choose you. And nothing says you have my permission like a signed Broker of Record Letter. Without permission it's extremely difficult to win in sales. That's why it's so important to define permission, know what it is, and know how to get it. Be sure to subscribe now to the Permission Sales Podcast. Key Topics: The rebrand from Millionaire Insurance Producer Podcast to the Permission Sales Podcast Seth Godin's "Tribes" and the philosophy of finding your people Defining permission: giving prospects what they want to get what you need A signed Broker of Record Letter as the clearest expression of permission Quoting without permission and why agents lose even when priced lower The Find Your 50 framework for targeting the right client count Working commission math backward to reach a $500K or million-dollar book Three to three-and-a-half years as the timeline to a full book Permission at every level, prospects, carriers, and underwriters all require it Thinking like your prospect, not a producer, to start gathering commission Reach out to Charles Specht Visit us at: Permission Network Permission Sales Podcast on LinkedIn Permission University Courses & Curriculum Permission Producer School Chief Sales Officer Produced by PodSquad.fm
Discover 40 everyday phrases you've likely used your whole life—without realizing they come straight from the King James version of the Holy Bible. In this fully illustrated episode of the Bible Made Easy Podcast, Brother George shares 40 powerful Bible sayings that have become part of everyday speech—from “You reap what you sow” to “The blind leading the blind” and many more. This engaging visual journey reveals the Biblical origins behind common idioms, metaphors, and expressions we use daily. Each phrase is brought to life with clear illustrations and KJV scripture, helping you understand both the meaning and context of these timeless sayings. #Kingjamesbible #Biblesayings #biblicalphrases #christianteaching #biblestudy #idiomsinenglish #kjvbible scriptures, #bibleexplained Bible Made Easy Podcast: Bible based lessons through the lens of God's eternal love for humanity and His desire to reconcile all things to Himself.
Denis Dyli has spent 13 years building Shopify stores for the businesses nobody wants to talk about: industrial suppliers, janitorial distributors, pipe manufacturers. The unsexy stuff. He's now a Shopify Platinum Partner, and he's turning all that pain into an AI-powered deal room that converts messy email RFQs into structured quotes in minutes, not weeks. We get into why B2B and wholesale are fundamentally different buying experiences, how mid-market manufacturers ($20M-$100M) are the most underserved segment in ecommerce, and why your B2B quoting process probably still feels like 1997. SPONSORS Swym - Wishlists, Back in Stock alerts, & more getswym.com/kurt Cleverific - Smart order editing for Shopify cleverific.com Zipify - Build high-converting sales funnels zipify.com/KURT LINKS Uncap: https://uncap.com Denis Dyli on LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/denisdyli WORK WITH KURT Apply for Shopify Help ethercycle.com/apply See Our Results ethercycle.com/work Free Newsletter kurtelster.com The Unofficial Shopify Podcast is hosted by Kurt Elster and explores the stories behind successful Shopify stores. Get actionable insights, practical strategies, and proven tactics from entrepreneurs who've built thriving ecommerce businesses.
This show has been flagged as Explicit by the host. New hosts There were no new hosts this month. Last Month's Shows Id Day Date Title Host 4608 Wed 2026-04-01 Simple Podcasting - Episode 1 - Preparation and Recording Whiskeyjack 4609 Thu 2026-04-02 Proper Date Format Ahuka 4610 Fri 2026-04-03 Playing Civilization V, Part 10 Ahuka 4611 Mon 2026-04-06 HPR Community News for March 2026 HPR Volunteers 4612 Tue 2026-04-07 Hackerpublic Radio New Years Eve Show 2026 Episode 4 Honkeymagoo 4613 Wed 2026-04-08 Adding functionality to an Odoo installation Jeroen Baten 4614 Thu 2026-04-09 Dauug|18: Faster Than a '286, but Inspectable Like a Soroban Marc W. Abel 4615 Fri 2026-04-10 Clicking through an audit Lee 4616 Mon 2026-04-13 Thoughts about age control and further suggestions Trollercoaster 4617 Tue 2026-04-14 UNIX Curio #4 - Archiving Files Vance 4618 Wed 2026-04-15 Simple Podcasting - Episode 2 - Basic Filtering Whiskeyjack 4619 Thu 2026-04-16 HPR Beer Garden 12 - Baltic Porter Kevie 4620 Fri 2026-04-17 The Second Doctor, Part 1 Ahuka 4621 Mon 2026-04-20 Android volume control help operat0r 4622 Tue 2026-04-21 Hackerpublic Radio New Years Eve Show 2026 Episode 5 Honkeymagoo 4623 Wed 2026-04-22 A brief infodump on the Broadcast Address and Routing Jon The Nice Guy 4624 Thu 2026-04-23 Cheap Yellow Display Project Part 7: GUI Trying a Simple Hello World Trey 4625 Fri 2026-04-24 Site Specific Browsers Lee 4626 Mon 2026-04-27 Cable Management / PC Speakers operat0r 4627 Tue 2026-04-28 UNIX Curio #5 - Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! Vance 4628 Wed 2026-04-29 Nuclear Power Technology Follow Up Whiskeyjack 4629 Thu 2026-04-30 What did I do at work today? Part 2 Lee Comments this month Past shows hpr4424 (2025-07-17) "How I use Newsboat for Podcasts and Reddit" by Archer72. Ken Fallon said: "Summary of findings" (2026-04-05 14:09:24) Archer72 said: "Not fixed from أحمد المحمودي" (2026-04-25 11:02:26) hpr4569 (2026-02-05) "Kiosk with guest mode on Linux" by Klaatu. 0xf10e said: "Preconfiguring browsers profiles? and re-replies ;)" (2026-04-17 09:56:49) hpr4585 (2026-02-27) "mpv util scripts" by candycanearter. candycanearter07 said: "perpetually updated script(s)" (2026-04-14 20:41:28) hpr4596 (2026-03-16) "Adding voice-over audio track created using text to speech on the movie subtitles" by Ken Fallon. Windigo said: "Great usability win" (2026-04-24 19:33:03) hpr4600 (2026-03-20) "The First Doctor, Part 5" by Ahuka. Kevin O'Brien said: "Maybe I will" (2026-04-12 16:16:00) hpr4603 (2026-03-25) "On the Erosion of Freedom in Open Source Software" by HopperMCS. Trollercoaster said: "Hopper did time traveling!" (2026-04-09 05:46:52) hpr4605 (2026-03-27) "Lee locks down his wifey poo" by Elsbeth. Lee said: "Quotation" (2026-04-05 15:59:54) Paulj said: "Thanks!" (2026-04-06 16:44:28) hpr4606 (2026-03-30) "My Nerdy Childhood: From Floppy Disks to Dial-Up Dreams" by Trollercoaster. Trollercoaster said: "Damn you Nerdy Nostaliga!" (2026-04-06 15:28:34) This month's shows hpr4608 (2026-04-01) "Simple Podcasting - Episode 1 - Preparation and Recording" by Whiskeyjack. Archer72 said: "Listening ahead" (2026-04-01 10:06:46) Whiskeyjack said: "Reply to Archer72 on HPR4608" (2026-04-01 12:27:46) Reto said: "It reminds me about Solocast" (2026-04-03 07:49:58) Whiskeyjack said: "Response to Reto comment on HPR4608" (2026-04-04 18:19:25) Whiskeyjack said: "Further response to Reto comment on HPR4608" (2026-04-04 22:21:38) hpr4609 (2026-04-02) "Proper Date Format" by Ahuka. Jim DeVore said: "It is the only proper date format" (2026-04-04 14:19:15) candycanearter07 said: "sensical date format" (2026-04-06 09:37:47) hpr4611 (2026-04-06) "HPR Community News for March 2026" by HPR Volunteers. candycanearter07 said: "misattributed comment" (2026-04-06 03:24:30) Ken Fallon said: "Fixed" (2026-04-06 13:50:17) hpr4614 (2026-04-09) "Dauug|18: Faster Than a '286, but Inspectable Like a Soroban" by Marc W. Abel. Jim DeVore said: "Is this the best approach for privacy?" (2026-04-12 03:15:44) candycanearter07 said: "interesting!" (2026-04-13 16:43:22) hpr4616 (2026-04-13) "Thoughts about age control and further suggestions" by Trollercoaster. Antoine said: "'Jus'do the age verification'" (2026-04-20 01:37:33) candycanearter07 said: "good strategy" (2026-04-22 13:24:48) Trollercoaster said: "Looking forward at next steps" (2026-04-25 15:37:22) Antoine said: "Our State. The Invitation." (2026-04-26 23:55:45) hpr4618 (2026-04-15) "Simple Podcasting - Episode 2 - Basic Filtering" by Whiskeyjack. Antoine said: "Applying filters - exp. with declicking - Compression?" (2026-04-20 12:50:09) Whiskeyjack said: "Response to Antoine on de-essing in HPR 4618" (2026-04-22 15:59:57) Vance said: "Click removal" (2026-04-25 14:31:40) Whiskeyjack said: "Reply to Vance in HPR4618 - Click Removal" (2026-04-27 00:48:11) Vance said: "To Whiskeyjack - Click Removal" (2026-04-28 00:43:11) Whiskeyjack said: "Reply to Vance on Click Removal in HPR4618" (2026-04-28 17:16:54) hpr4619 (2026-04-16) "HPR Beer Garden 12 - Baltic Porter" by Kevie. Gan Ainm said: "Störtebeker - again" (2026-04-17 16:37:29) hpr4621 (2026-04-20) "Android volume control help" by operat0r. candycanearter07 said: "intended double entendre?" (2026-04-21 18:58:54) hpr4624 (2026-04-23) "Cheap Yellow Display Project Part 7: GUI Trying a Simple Hello World " by Trey. Ken Fallon said: "Great to hear your success" (2026-04-23 08:36:28) hpr4625 (2026-04-24) "Site Specific Browsers" by Lee. candycanearter07 said: "electron charged opinion" (2026-04-24 03:38:13) hpr4627 (2026-04-28) "UNIX Curio #5 - Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" by Vance. Antoine said: "kill and killall" (2026-04-29 11:57:27) candycanearter07 said: "killer episode" (2026-04-29 15:14:31) Vance said: "Glad you enjoyed it" (2026-04-29 20:58:44) candycanearter07 said: "Re: Glad you enjoyed it" (2026-04-30 18:58:50) Mailing List discussions Policy decisions surrounding HPR are taken by the community as a whole. This discussion takes place on the Mailing List which is open to all HPR listeners and contributors. The discussions are open and available on the HPR server under Mailman. The threaded discussions this month can be found here: https://lists.hackerpublicradio.com/pipermail/hpr/2026-April/thread.html Events Calendar With the kind permission of LWN.net we are linking to The LWN.net Community Calendar. Quoting the site: This is the LWN.net community event calendar, where we track events of interest to people using and developing Linux and free software. Clicking on individual events will take you to the appropriate web page. Provide feedback on this episode.
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A man tried to assassinate the President—and used the words of Jesus to justify it. Quoting “turn the other cheek” and “render unto Caesar,” he argued that violence was necessary. But that's not what Jesus taught.In this video, we break down these passages in context and show how Scripture is being dangerously twisted.
Owning a machine shop sounds great… until you're chasing work, quoting jobs at midnight, dealing with problem customers, and trying to stay profitable while keeping the lights on.Recorded live as a panel session during a Kennametal open house event, Brad from Marvel Machining, Ian from Lakewood Machine & Tool, and Luke from Progressive Turnings / Crusader Machining sit down for a real conversation about the ups and downs of running a shop.They talk about finding work, quoting jobs, when to say no, staying busy vs actually making money, keeping good employees, buying equipment, and the jobs that almost broke them.Whether you're a one-man shop, running a full team, or thinking about starting your own business, there's something in here you'll relate to.Just honest shop talk from people living it every day.
Are you wasting hours quoting deals for customers who were never ready to buy in the first place?If you've ever felt stuck chasing “maybe” deals that go nowhere, you're not alone.Many business owners and sales teams spend huge amounts of time quoting prospects who are simply exploring options—not actually ready to move forward—leaving pipelines clogged and conversions low.In this episode you'll discover:How to instantly identify whether a prospect is ready to buy or just browsing so you can stop wasting time on dead-end deals.How to shift your sales approach to guide undecided prospects toward clarity and build stronger relationships.How to improve your close rate by focusing your time and energy only on high-intent opportunities.Hit play now to learn the one simple question that can transform your sales pipeline and help you close more deals with less effort.New episodes every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.Take our Free Quote Quiz now to Kickstart Your Sales Growthhttps://quiz.typeform.com/to/ByHoaj2bTo see how we've helped business grow their sales:Read Client ResultsWatch TestimonialsOr email Ben if you would like to get in touch: hello@strongersalesteams.comThis podcast helps the entrepreneur, founder, CEO, and business owner in the trade, construction and industry segments, regain focus, build confidence, and achieve measurable results through powerful sales training, effective sales strategy, and expert sales coaching—guiding every sales leader, sales manager, and sales team in mastering the sales process, optimizing the sales pipeline, and driving business growth while fostering leadership, balance, and freedom amidst overwhelm, stress, and potential burnout, creating lasting peace of mind and smarter decision making for every California business and Australia business ready to scale up with excellence in sales management , through refined sales processes, proven trade sales techniques, and strategic sales leadership that strengthens sales process execution, accelerates sales team development, builds stronger sales teams, improves time management for sales, drives resilience and results, increases team results across the construction industry and wider industry sales sectors, and supports sustainable trading growth that continues to drive results through an effective management process in modern trade sales.
The absurdity of random evolution Welcome back to Gnostic Insights and to the Gnostic Reformation on Substack. I’ve been sharing these Gnostic Insights for a few years now, and I’ve discovered that the one topic that flares people up, the most controversial aspect of Gnosticism, doesn’t really have anything to do with the nature of God, or the Archons, or where we go after we die. Believe it or not, Darwinian evolution is the thing that really gets under people’s skins when I say, I don’t believe it, I believe in intelligent design–that we are second order powers sent from the Fullness of God, fully loaded with everything we need to know, because we carry within us the consciousness of the Father. So let me step through this notion once again—try to explain it in a way that will make sense—and if you find yourself just going livid with reaction against what I’m saying, well, that’s what I’m talking about. This is the hot button topic. I remember when I was taught evolutionary theory, and they said it took thousands of generations of minute changes to populate a beneficial mutation to the stage where you could say it had evolved. For instance, in 2012, Michigan State University researchers were very happy to demonstrate the evolution of citrate-eating E. coli bacteria after only 56,000 generations. 56,000 generations! I remember the day in elementary school when I first learned about evolution. There was an illustration in the textbook mocking the concept of Lamarckian evolution. Lamarck had promoted the idea that giraffes who stretched their necks to reach the leaves on higher branches gave birth to calves with longer necks. No, no, Darwinians said, natural selection is the way it happens, as only long-necked giraffes survived the lean years to give birth to more long-necked calves like themselves. And that logic was supposed to have settled the argument concerning Darwinian evolution. Mama giraffe and baby giraffe The reason Darwinian evolutionary theory won out over Lamarck’s theory of epigenetic trait inheritance was that Lamarck’s type of evolution requires learning and volitional repetition, whereas Darwin’s creatures were either born lucky to have long necks or were doomed to be short-necked losers. Even as a child of ten or so, I recall wondering, if long necks were so valuable as to have evolved into our familiar high-nibbling giraffes, then why don’t all large grazing animals have long necks? Then I came up with my own Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything and developed a theory of evolution in keeping with the Simple Explanation. My theory of evolution reinserts learning and choice into the equation and removes the element of dumb luck. Seriously, who would ever look around themselves at the varieties of natural adaptation and believe that dumb luck at the material level accidentally brought it all about? It just doesn’t even make sense. It defies the basic rule of 52 pickup. You’ve heard of that, right? 52 pickup is, if you throw a deck of cards in the air, it never comes down stacked and in order. It never does. In other words, randomness cannot lead to an organism such as we humans that can contemplate and comprehend the universe. It is completely illogical to think that randomness can account for intelligence. Did you ever hear that old expression that given enough time a thousand monkeys sitting at a thousand typewriters could draft a copy of Shakespeare or the Bible? That’s preposterous. It would never happen. Now consider how much more complex our biosphere is at all scales. The interior of a cell is extremely complex in its interconnected functions and parts. Then scale that up to the functions and parts of an organism and scale it up again to the interconnected ecology of forests and again to the interconnected biosphere of the planet. It is simply impossible to achieve without the guidance of an intelligent design. Stop and consider. Please use logic. So here is my Simple Explanation of evolution. First, we accept that the basic matrix of our universe is consciousness. The Simple Explanation's model of evolution is information driven rather than happenstance driven as the conventional model would have it. What I mean is that the Darwinian model we’ve all been taught relies upon the brute force of superior survival mechanisms that allow the superior creature to procreate and thereby pass on their superior genes. And after a tremendous number of such superior generations, the inferior fade into extinction and the superior organism becomes the new normal. In the Simple Explanation, there is an ontological pull upward toward more complex aggregations of consciousness. Darwin’s model is, on the other hand, a case of the blind simply bumbling by happenstance, by lucky accident, by dumb luck to be a superior adaptation from the norm. Where I find it unlikely is that there would be countless such bumblings in the same direction that by dumb luck keeps heading in the upward and onward direction. The Simple Explanation would say the patterns of superiority are few and they are fractal. So the wheel does not need to be reinvented over and over. The golden rule and the hierarchical distribution of increasing complexity and responsibility cover much of it. And due to the transpersonal nature of universal knowledge, basic mechanisms like hands and eyes only need to be invented once and then deployed or copied as needed. There are no such mechanisms in Darwinian evolution. There is no way for one creature to transmit the importance of the development of an eyeball to a different creature in a different part of the world. They don’t believe in transpersonal consciousness. They don’t believe in fractal knowledge or the golden rule. Consciousness is not a byproduct of the human brain or even of a complex system of any sort. Consciousness is the ground state of reality. Think of consciousness as the medium upon which is written the formulae of our universe. The Simple Explanation refers to this ground state as the metaverse. And by the way, the Gnostic gospel (jumping ahead) refers to this consciousness as the Father. You might think of it as God. And it contains every law of the universe as potential expression that manifests when and where appropriate. Smaller derivative units of consciousness are fractals of the originating units of consciousness that express themselves in every single material expression of our universe. consciousness flows in an unending stream from the God Above All Gods In the Gnostic gospel, we call those the second order of powers of which we and all living creatures are a part. The most ambitious units of consciousness, or we would say second order powers, continue to find themselves occupying larger and more complex physical forms. Some of the units of consciousness that started in Earth’s primordial soup have remained in the soup, never attaching themselves to anything more complex than a single-celled organism. The most ambitious little life forms found themselves returning to slightly more sophisticated organisms with each incarnation. Lessons learned are carried forward, always incarnating more and complex structures and occasionally jumping to a more complex hierarchical level, driving the evolution of planetary life via memes accrued through karma. Was my self-unit of consciousness ever a single-celled organism? Probably so, beginning about four and a half billion years ago on this planet. Was my unit of consciousness ever a jellyfish? Good chance it was, since the toroidal-shaped jellyfish is the oldest multi-organ animal on Earth, swimming our seas for the last 700 million years and surviving countless planetary die-offs that killed other organisms. Was my unit of consciousness ever a dinosaur? Well, maybe, but maybe not. I’d imagine the dinosaur memes and karma informed the development of reptiles and birds, not my mammalian lineage. The first mammals are thought to have descended from a different lizard called therapsids. Was my governing unit of consciousness ever a lemur or a chimpanzee or a bonobo or perhaps an australopithecus or a neanderthal? Probably was, since their proto-human memes and karma would have informed human development and the self-unit of consciousness is attracted to familiar patterns. In the Simple Explanations evolutionary model, no war is needed between natural selection and creationism, between science and religion. My Simple Explanation proposes that everything in the cosmos is created through metaversal principles embodied in all units of consciousness and that each governing unit of consciousness evolves according to personal inclination and ability through established patterns of meme acquisition and adaptation and the utterly fair and impartial mechanism of karma. In the Simple Explanation evolutionary schema, I am currently a human and probably have been for a long time. Does that make me more evolved than my dogs? No, not really. The family dogs are at the same level of hierarchical sophistication as the humans. The dog’s aggregate units of consciousness and their Self units of consciousness have all made decisions every step along the way that steered them into this life as these dogs. Every governing unit of consciousness is an integral part of one aggregate or another, hierarchically upline and downline. Every slot needs to be filled. The most you could say of my state of evolution is that ambitious meme collectors evolve into ever more complex instantiations. And my unit of consciousness and those of my aggregate units of consciousness that make up my body are attached to some highly ambitious collections of memes. But whether or not this is anything to brag about is debatable. Now all of that theory that I’ve been sharing with you comes from my book, A Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything, which was published many years ago. And you can still pick that up on Amazon or through the Gnostic Insights website. It’s entirely consistent with the Gnostic view of evolution, as I came to discover many years later. So let’s look now at the Gnostic view of evolution in particular. We are what are called second order of powers. The first order of powers are the Aeons in the Fullness of God. We are the fruit of the Aeons. We are the second order of powers. We’re also known as those of the remembrance. And I suggest that what was sown in the second order of powers that lifted them above the imitation was the remembrance. And for life forms, that remembrance is contained in our double helix DNA. We also have a pure remembrance of the Fullness of God, our aeonic progenitors, contained in our Self with the capital S. But at our cellular level, the DNA is carrying the remembrance forward. As it turned out, the second order of powers became infected with the same lust for dominion that had infected those of the imitation due to the law of mutual combat. And the two orders began a never-ending war over resources in the limited ecology of our early earth. The second order of powers are also known as the likenesses, because we are alike the Aeons. We resemble the original Aeons of the Fullness, but we lost ourselves in the confusion of earth. The Demiurge and its archons are the other entities of the fall that we haven’t talked about yet, since we have only been talking about the physical universe, and archons are immaterial. They are not physical. They are influences. So when we talk about the never-ending war with the living forms, it’s the archons doing battle with the living forms. And those influences of the archons on our material bodies are death, aging, illness. Quoting from the Tripartite Tractate, verses 84 and 85, The powers of the remembrance were adorned with the names of the pre-existence whose likenesses they were. [And that’s the Aeons of the Fullness.] The order of this kind was in harmony with itself and with each other. It fought, however, the order of those of the imitation. And the order of the imitation is the forces of the archons, which include entropy and death. Quoting again, It fought, however, the order of those of the imitation because that order waged war against the likenesses as they were producing various kinds of matter and all sorts of powers mixed with one another and in great number. Now the whole establishment and organization of the images, likenesses, and imitations has come into being for the sake of those who need nourishment, instruction, and form so that their smallness may gradually grow as through the instruction provided by the image of a mirror. That, in fact, is why he created the human last after having prepared and provided for him the things that he created for his sake. So do you hear how that verse from the Tripartite Tractate of the Nag Hammadi says that second order powers develop from the smallest to the largest and that the humans were the last to develop? It goes along with this notion of evolutionary development because we humans couldn’t have just been plopped right into the middle of the primordial soup from the get-go. Look around you. We needed the smaller creatures to come before us to create this environment, this ecology in which we could thrive. And I’m not simply saying it’s all for us humans because every creature that comes along is providing through the Simple Golden Rule all of the needs of all of the other creatures. Let’s talk about the Simple Golden Rule before we end this discussion of evolution. Our job is to reach out to others with love, aid, and information for the betterment of all. The Simple Golden Rule That’s, again, another theory from my Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything. So if you’ve never read that book you might like to go back and read it. This goes for all units of consciousness, all second order powers from the cells and organs up to the organisms and to the ecosystems beyond. Every physical manifestation links up with others of its kind in this universe. Cells link together to make organs. Organs link together to make organisms. Organisms link together to create societies and so on. And these are the building blocks of the next level of hierarchical aggregation. This is re-instantiating the hierarchy of the Fullness in this bounded material universe. And this is what is called the new ecology. It was a way to put the consciousness of the Fullness—the Aeons—into a physical form and manifest them on this earth. And then this will go forward and become the next ecology. The first ecology was the hierarchy of the Fullness. The second ecology is this material universe of ours. And then once this universe is fully redeemed by the Christ it will become the next hierarchical organization—the third ecology. And the way this happens is to reach out to others with love, assistance, and information for the betterment of all. I hope you’ve enjoyed this review of my Simple Explanation Theory of Evolution and how it is logically superior to Darwinian evolution and how it all fits into Gnosticism and the Gnostic Evolutionary Theory, as presented by the Tripartite Tractate. Until next week, God bless us all and Onward and Upward! Please pick up your copy of A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel and leave a review!
The Pentagon moved to defend Secretary of War Pete Hegseth after he recited a prayer at a Pentagon worship service that closely resembled a fictional monologue from Quentin Tarantino's 1994 film Pulp Fiction, a passage that has never appeared in the Bible. Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell addressed the controversy in a statement on X, writing, "Secretary Hegseth on Wednesday shared a custom prayer, referenced as the CSAR prayer, used by the brave warfighters of Sandy-1 who led the daylight rescue mission of Dude 44 Alpha out of Iran, which was obviously inspired by dialogue in Pulp Fiction. Secretary Hegseth on Wednesday shared a custom prayer, referenced as the CSAR prayer, used by the brave warfighters of Sandy-1 who led the daylight rescue mission of Dude 44 Alpha out of Iran, which was obviously inspired by dialogue in Pulp Fiction. During the worship service at the Pentagon, Hegseth said the prayer, known as "CSAR 25:17," had been used by "Sandy-1" combat search-and-rescue crews before missions, including a recent operation involving two U.S. Air Force personnel, who were shot down over Iran.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
In this episode, we discuss the life and legacy of poet, actor, and rapper Tupac Shakur. Quoting from his official website: “Tupac Shakur is one of the greatest and most controversial artists of all time. More than a quarter of a century after his tragic death in 1996 at the age of just twenty-five, he [...]
You got off the call feeling great. The conversation flowed, they seemed interested, and you said — "I'll send over a proposal." And then you spent the next two hours writing it, the next two days waiting for a response, and the next two weeks following up. Sound familiar? If you are a coach, consultant, brand designer, VA, marketing agency owner, or any kind of service provider who is sending proposals to get business, this episode is your wake-up call. Proposals are not the professional, polished move you think they are. For most service providers, they are quietly killing your close rate, draining your time, and handing control of your sale over to a document that can't answer questions, handle objections, or guide anyone to a decision. In this episode, Jamila breaks down exactly why proposals are working against you and makes the case for package pricing, the shift that speeds up your sales cycle, puts you back in the driver's seat of every sales conversation, and helps you close clients in one call instead of one month. Key Topics Discussed The hidden cost of proposals that most service providers never stop to calculate Why your sales process might be the reason deals are stalling — not your pricing The simple pricing shift that helps entrepreneurs close clients in one conversation A real client story that will make you rethink how you're currently selling The quick audit that tells you exactly where your sales process is breaking down Key Takeaways Proposals hand control of your sale to a document. When you send a proposal and get off the phone, you remove yourself from the most important part of the process — the moment your client is deciding. You can't answer questions, address hesitation, or guide them. The proposal has to do all of that alone. And it can't. Package pricing closes clients faster. When your offers are defined in advance and you walk clients through them on the call, the decision happens in real time. No waiting. No follow-up. No guessing. Two packages is a great place to start. Package A and Package B. Define your deliverables clearly, know the differentiators between each tier, and put it somewhere you can pull up on a sales call. That's it. Your business is not too custom for packages. Your expertise doesn't change client to client — only the context does. Packages exist to give clients a range to find where they fit within what you offer. That's not less personal. That's smart design. Confidence in your offers is part of the sale. Arriving at a sales conversation with clear, defined packages sends a message: I know what I do, I know what it's worth, and here's what it looks like to work with me. That energy closes clients. Resources & Links Mentioned Connect with Jamila on Instagram: @JamilaPayneMBA Learn more about working with Jamila: Schedule a call Join my newsletter, The Productivity Edit Enjoyed This Episode? If this episode resonated with you, please take 60 seconds to leave a 5-star rating and a written review — it helps Productive & Paid reach more entrepreneurs who need to hear this. Share it with a business owner friend who you know is out here sending proposals and waiting by the inbox. And DM Jamila on Instagram @JamilaPayneMBA with your biggest takeaway. This is the Productive & Paid podcast — real conversations about entrepreneurship and money. Until next week, stay productive and get paid.
https://programs.the-christ.net/courses/the-way-of-the-mystic In this Saturday Movie Session of the 8th Way of the Mystic Weekend, themed "As If There Is No World," David Hoffmeister uses a rare demonstration of deep devotion to remind us that salvation is not a matter of time, but of prayer and desire. By examining a role model of spiritual commitment, we learn that the world inherently resists the Christ, yet we are called to forgive and move toward God until only pure Love remains. Specialness dissolves when we love everyone equally with the Love of God, which requires forgiving the blocks that use the body for pride, pleasure, or attack.Quoting the movie's protagonist, David explains that we reach "Paradise through toil and chastity"—metaphorical terms for disciplined mind training and purity of thought. Ultimately, the world's purpose is to strengthen our faith, and every single situation, without exception, can serve as an opportunity to deepen the trust that would settle all problems now. By maintaining our connection with God regardless of external forms, we keep our hearts open to Guidance until we reach the lived experience of the Truth that sets us free.These gatherings take place every weekend in February and March 2026 and include teachings, films, music, panel discussions, and live Q&A sessions with David Hoffmeister.Register for the Way of the Mystic for free here:https://programs.the-christ.net/courses/the-way-of-the-mystic If you want to learn more about David Hoffmeister and Living Miracles events, visit https://circle.livingmiraclescenter.org/events Recording Date: Online, Saturday, March 28, 2026Follow us on:YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/DavidHoffmeister https://www.youtube.com/@LivingMiraclesFacebook:https://www.facebook.com/ACIM.ACourseInMiracles Learn more about David & Living Miracles:https://circle.livingmiraclescenter.org/eventsLearn more about A Course in Miracles:https://ACIM.bizDavid's Spanish YouTube Channel is: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP9Gw00CldPUmiu43y7fdWwDavid's Portuguese YouTube Channel is:https://www.youtube.com/@davidhoffmeisterucem
Ever underquoted a job… and instantly regretted it? That sinking feeling isn't just about money—it's your nervous system hijacking your decisions. In this episode, Keith Kalfas breaks down the hidden psychology behind underpricing, why it keeps you stuck, and how to shift from emotional decision-making to data-driven strategy. This isn't about "charging more just because." It's about becoming the kind of operator who knows their numbers—and acts accordingly. "Math is the path. Strategy beats emotion every time." – Keith Kalfas What You'll Learn in This Episode: Why underquoting feels like a permanent setback (but isn't) How to separate emotion from business decisions and treat everything as data The shift from "worker mindset" to scientist mindset A simple split-testing strategy to raise your prices without panic How fear-based decisions quietly destroy your income Why habits—not motivation—are the real growth engine Key Takeaways: Detach from emotion—treat everything as data. Underquoting feels personal, but it's just feedback. When you stop reacting emotionally and start analyzing outcomes like a scientist, you make smarter decisions and improve faster. Fear and neediness are killing your pricing. Operating from survival mode makes you undercharge and repel better opportunities. Confidence comes from numbers and strategy—not desperation. "Math is the path" → raise prices strategically. Know your real numbers, then test higher pricing (especially with new clients). Use systems, packages, and small adjustments to steadily increase income without guessing. Connect with Keith Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/keithkalfas/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thelandscapingemployeetrap Website: https://www.keithkalfas.com/resources Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@keith-kalfas Resources and Websites: Build Your Site: https://www.keithkalfas.com/ReBolt Call Tracking Software: https://www.keithkalfas.com/CallRail Start Getting Leads Now https://www.footbridgemedia.com/keith The Untrapped Alliance: https://www.keithkalfas.com/alliance Resources You Need To Build A Successful Business https://www.keithkalfas.com/resources
It's Friday, March 27th, A.D. 2026. This is The Worldview in 5 Minutes heard on 140 radio stations and at www.TheWorldview.com. I'm Adam McManus. (Adam@TheWorldview.com) By Adam McManus Finnish lawmaker convicted over speaking truth about homosexuality In a narrow 3–2 decision, the Finnish Supreme Court has found parliamentarian Päivi Räsänen guilty of so-called “hate speech” for simply affirming a Biblical understanding of marriage and sexual ethics in a 20-year-old church pamphlet, reports LifeSiteNews.com. Räsänen has been criminally convicted for publishing the 2004 pamphlet for her church, alongside Lutheran Bishop Juhana Pohjola. The conviction is for “making and keeping available to the public a text that insults a group.” She said, “I am shocked and profoundly disappointed that the court has failed to recognize my basic human right to freedom of expression. I stand by the teachings of my Christian faith, and will continue to defend my [right] and every person's right to share their convictions in the public square.” The Finish Supreme Court has imposed criminal fines of several thousand Euros and ruled that the impugned statements must be “removed from public access and destroyed.” Päivi Räsänen has served as a member of the Finnish Parliament since 1995, and was Minister of the Interior from 2011-2015. She is a medical doctor, mother of five children, and has twelve grandchildren. In a related development, the Finish Supreme Court unanimously acquitted Räsänen for her 2019 Bible verse tweet. Canada's House criminalizes quoting Bible Religious expression is under attack in Canada as well. The majority of Canadian Members of Parliament voted to pass a leftist bill that will criminalize the quotation of Bible verses on homosexual behavior and gender, reports LifeSiteNews.com. Early Wednesday evening, in a 186–137 vote, they passed Bill C-9, which is misnamed the “Combatting Hate Act.” Members of Parliament from the Conservative Party, New Democratic Party, and the Green Party voted against the bill in a rare form of unity among the usually opposing parties. The bill now heads to Canada's rubber-stamp Senate for review. David Cooke with the Campaign Life Coalition said, “With the passage of Bill C-9 in the [Canadian] House, Christians and pro-life advocates will almost certainly face an entirely new level of hostility, as the door swings open to actual persecution under a cloak of supposed legality.” The 186 foolish Members of the Canadian Parliament who voted to criminalize citing Bible verses about sexual perversion would no doubt object to my citation of Leviticus 18:22. It says, “Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable.” Trump postpones strikes on Iranian energy plants until April 6 On Thursday, President Donald Trump announced on Truth Social that the United States will extend the pause on strikes on Iranian energy plants by an additional 10 days, at the request of the Iranian government, reports CBS News. On Monday, the president announced a five-day pause on strikes on Iran's energy infrastructure in order to negotiate with Iran. The president said he's extending that pause to the evening of April 7 local time in Tehran. Trump to sign order to pay TSA agents President Donald Trump plans to sign an order that will pay Transportation Security Administration agents, who have not received a check since the Department of Homeland Security entered a partial shutdown in mid-February, reports The Epoch Times. In a March 26th Truth Social post, he wrote, “I am going to sign an Order instructing the Secretary of Homeland Security, Markwayne Mullin, to immediately pay our TSA Agents in order to address this Emergency Situation, and to quickly stop the Democrat Chaos at the Airports.” More than 3,120 TSA agents, who have not been paid in weeks, called in sick on Wednesday, which prompted long lines to continue at airports across the country. Pennsylvania Democrats have egg on their faces And finally, Pennsylvania House Democrats withdrew consideration of a resolution honoring March as "National Women's Month" after a Republican lawmaker filed an amendment to include the physiological definition of "woman" in the text, report Fox News. What was expected to be a quick, symbolic vote turned into a brief but telling floor moment. Listen how the Republicans forced the question into the open and Democrats opted to shelve the resolution rather than define what a "woman" is in legislation — leading to an eruption of laughter on the House floor. Democratic House Speaker Joanna McClinton was bringing a rapid-fire succession of bills up for consideration late in Tuesday's session when she asked the clerk to introduce House Resolution 390. McCLINTON: “The Chair recognizes the Majority Leader who calls up House Resolution on page eight of today's House calendar. The clerk will read a summary of the resolution.” CLERK: “A resolution recognizing the month of March 2026, as Women's History Month in Pennsylvania, introduced by Representative Carol Hill-Evans.” McCLINTON: “[Republican] Representative [Aaron] Bernstine offers A02716. Will the House agree to the amendment? On that question, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Lawrence, maker of the amendment. Representative Bernstein.” BERNSTINE: “Thank you, Madam Speaker. Madam Speaker, this amendment is very straightforward and clear. It defines what a woman actually is, because we do know what that is. Thank you.” What happened next was stunning! During 30 seconds of silence, Democrats quietly considered the fact that they had been painted into a corner. If they defined what a woman was in order for the proposed Women's History Month to be considered, they would alienate their leftist base which has swallowed the woke transgender agenda -- hook, line and sinker. Put bluntly, Democrats believe that a man, pretending to be a woman, is a woman! There was movement at the dais. So, this is what House Majority Leader Joanna McClinton declared. McCLINTON: “The resolution is temporarily over.” (Republicans laugh out loud on the Pennsylvania House floor) You can hear the Republicans laughing out loud at the utter foolishness of the hypocritical Democrats who want to look like they are championing women but oddly cannot even agree with the biological definition of what a woman is. McClinton immediately turned to the clerk to read the next piece of legislation. In an interview Wednesday, GOP Rep. Bernstine defended his amendment as a common sense measure, saying that defining a woman as having XX chromosomes should not be controversial. The Republican said, "They pulled [the Women's History Month] because they were scared to define what a woman actually is." Jason Gottesman, spokesman for the House Republican Caucus, further told Fox News that "if Democrats want to celebrate what they refuse to define, it is clear they do not take this issue seriously." In Matthew 19:4, Jesus asked, “Haven't you read, that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female?'” Close And that's The Worldview on this Friday, March 27th, in the year of our Lord 2026. Follow us on X or subscribe for free by Spotify, Amazon Music, or by iTunes or email to our unique Christian newscast at www.TheWorldview.com. Plus, you can get the Generations app through Google Play or The App Store. I'm Adam McManus (Adam@TheWorldview.com). Seize the day for Jesus Christ.
Welcome to Season 16 of The Fire Time Podcast—and for the first time ever, we're on video. To kick things off, Tim steps in for Gideon Honeycutt at the 2026 HPBExpo to teach a session on breaking free from the quote trap—the costly cycle where salespeople fail to show customers why a product uniquely solves their problem and get reduced to handing out numbers. What follows is a masterclass in three deceptively simple steps that can fundamentally transform how your team sells. In this episode, Tim covers: Why most salespeople accidentally turn their products into commodities—and how a customer intake form flips the script by uncovering the real problem before you ever show a product. How adopting a documented company sales process turns your team from clerks flying by the seat of their pants into consultants who guide customers toward a decision with confidence. Why establishing a next step with every single quote is the difference between "let me know" and actually closing the sale—and how appropriate pressure is a gift to your customers, not a burden. Don't miss this no-nonsense kickoff to Season 16 that proves the basics aren't basic at all—because the companies that master these three steps don't just close more sales, they give their customers an experience worth coming back for. —— Watch this podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-oBrCc-NWHaFtu_b51D-jpNXu8jJDX2v To hear more audio articles from our magazine, subscribe to the Fire Time Magazine Podcast: https://www.itsfiretime.com/magazine Subscribe to The Fire Time Magazine: https://itsfiretime.com/subscribe Support The Fire Time Podcast financially: https://www.itsfiretime.com/join WhyFire Fireplace AI Visualizer: https://whyfire.com
Tonight there are new strikes on the U.S. embassy in Iraq, and the U.S. military dropped 5,000-pound, GPS-guided bombs to blow up Iranian missile sites threatening ships in the Gulf. Back home, top national security official Joe Kent became the first senior administration member to quit over the war. Quoting now from his resignation letter to the president: "Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Rabbi Steve Berkson takes us on a deep dive into scripture, into the spiritual underworld, led by an entity known in scripture as HaSatan. Understanding the enemy of our belief is crucial to successfully living a Torah-observant life.• Reset / Review• Hebrews 2:14 – Does Satan have the power of death?• Hebrews 2:1 – Let's go to chapter 1• Hebrews 1:1 – What's the point of the book of Hebrews?• Hebrews 1:5 – Righteousness brings gladness• Hebrews 1:10 – A Deliverer is coming• Hebrews 2:1 – Lest we drift away• Hebrews 2:2 – You're going to serve someone • Hebrews 2:3 – Neglecting the deliverance • Hebrews 2:4 – Quoting from Psalm 8• Psalm 8:4 • Hebrews 2:9 – That we would be one with Elohim• Hebrews 2:12 – Messiah destroys the power of the devil• Hebrews 2:14 – Enslaved by fear• Hebrews 2:16 – Making the case for Yeshua the High Priest • He's got you• Hebrews 3:1 – Shifting from Moses to Yeshua• Hebrews 3:10 – They have not known my ways• Psalm 95 – They shall not enter my rest• Exodus 17 – What happened at Meribah?• Blaming the wrong person?• But you don't trust • Hebrews 3:12 – Falling away because of unbelief?• Hebrews 3:13 – What was the rebellion?• Unable to enter because of unbelief• WisdomListen to the Afterburn tomorrowSubscribe to be notified of new content each week.Learn more about MTOI:https://mtoi.orgThe MTOI App https://mtoi.org/download-the-mtoi-appFollow MTOI:https://www.facebook.com/mtoiworldwide https://www.instagram.com/mtoi_worldwidehttps://www.tiktok.com/@mtoi_worldwide Contact MTOI:
Justin, Senator Howard, and Chris discuss the Iran War, criticism of John Piper for quoting Scripture, and AI. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
In this episode, Lisa opens with the reminder that real, sustainable change begins not in urgency, panic, or the frantic rush to “fix” your body, but in the quiet, embodied willingness to be exactly where you are. She invites listeners to step out of the urgency of weight‑loss pressure and into the felt safety that makes transformation possible—safety in your breath, in your body, and in the present moment. Lisa unpacks why panic tightens the system, why urgency blocks clarity, and why the path forward only reveals itself when you stop fighting the moment you're in. Drawing on lived experience, nervous‑system science, and a three‑level coaching framework, she guides listeners toward releasing the fear‑driven chase for change so one can finally see the exit, the path, and the next right step from a grounded, regulated place. Topics Include:Releasing PanicEmotional SafetyFramework for SuccessCommunity[1:55] Lisa shifts the conversation from theoretical groundwork to the "core conversation" of intentional weight loss, specifically focusing on the physiological components of radical acceptance and non-attachment. Lisa emphasizes moving beyond intellectual understanding. The goal is to "embody it until you habituate to it." Lisa explains that safety and acceptance must be felt physiologically to be effective.[3:50] Lisa uses the Harry Potter scene involving Devil's Snare to illustrate the body's response to discomfort.Panic: Struggling and fighting (like Ron) causes the plant to constrict tighter, meeting fear with fear causes physiological contraction and worsens symptoms.Relaxation: Relaxing and "trying on the energy of relaxation" (like Hermione and Harry) causes the plant to release, helping the body to feel safe.[8:35] Lisa applies this to her experience with IBS and chronic pain. Realizing that panic was fueling her physical contraction, she utilized the mantra: "You are uncomfortable, you are not unsafe." The urgency to lose weight is compared to being trapped in a burning room. Panicking and screaming "I have to get out" only adds fuel to the fire and blocks the exit. [25:52] Lisa outlines the three levels required for success:Emotional Sobriety: Learning to feel feelings without using food as a drug.Mind-Body Connection: Connecting with food and the body intuitively.Intentional Weight Loss: This step should only be pursued after the groundwork of levels 1 and 2 is complete. Attempting Level 3 prematurely leads to the cycle of failure.[37:25] For those who react to their reflection as if they are a "predator," Lisa recommends her Mirror Work Challenge to build the capacity to bear witness to one's own body. Lisa addresses facing fears (like wearing a swimsuit in public), one should not throw themselves into the deep end and dissociate. Instead, she urges taking fetus steps to stay in a learning zone rather than a danger zone. She encourages to imagine how one would move, breathe, and exist if they already felt safe, and to start embodying those physical behaviors now. [1:06:06] Lisa argues that individual work is not enough because humans have an "animal brain in a social context."- Quoting "grief cannot be metabolized in isolation," she emphasizes that healing requires safe relationships and the brain needs to learn there are people who can see, love, and accept you without judgment.*The views of podcast guests do not necessarily reflect the views and beliefs of Lisa Schlosberg or Out of the Cave, LLC.LISA IS NOW ACCEPTING: One-on-One Clients!Purchase the OOTC book of 50 Journal PromptsLeave Questions and Feedback for Lisa via OOTC Pod Feedback Form Email Lisa: lisa@lisaschlosberg.comOut of the Cave Merch - For 10% off use code SCHLOS10Lisa's Socials: Instagram Facebook YouTube
Are we really that bad? Aren't some people better than others? In Romans 3:9-20, the Apostle Paul pulls no punches and places every single person, religious and rebellious, under the same verdict: guilty before a holy God. Quoting from the Old Testament, he shows that sin isn't just something we do, it's a condition we live under, affecting our hearts, our words, our paths, and ultimately our reverence for God. This message confronts our tendency to compare, excuse, and justify ourselves. It reminds us that no one naturally seeks God, no one does good with pure motives, and no one stands righteous by their own effort, so that every mouth may be silenced and every heart prepared for grace. In this message you'll learn: - Why being “better than others” is not the standard - The difference between sinful actions and a sinful condition - How our words reveal what rules our hearts - Why the fear of God frees us from the fear of everything else - How the law exposes guilt so grace can truly save
HOUR 1- When Quoting the Show Goes Wrong, Rain Pussies and MORE full 1593 Tue, 17 Feb 2026 16:42:00 +0000 y0gBgPgfji3qYtBtirrsZ4YwTE2rFi4c society & culture Klein/Ally Show: The Podcast society & culture HOUR 1- When Quoting the Show Goes Wrong, Rain Pussies and MORE Klein.Ally.Show on KROQ is more than just a "dynamic, irreverent morning radio show that mixes humor, pop culture, and unpredictable conversation with a heavy dose of realness." (but thanks for that quote anyway). Hosted by Klein, Ally, and a cast of weirdos (both on the team and from their audience), the show is known for its raw, offbeat style, offering a mix of sarcastic banter, candid interviews, and an unfiltered take on everything from culture to the chaos of everyday life. With a loyal, engaged fanbase and an addiction for pushing boundaries, the show delivers the perfect blend of humor and insight, all while keeping things fun, fresh, and sometimes a little bit illegal. 2024 © 2021 Audacy, Inc. Society & Culture False https://player.amperwavepodca
For more coverage on the issues that matter to you, download the WMAL app, visit WMAL.com or tune in live on WMAL-FM 105.9 from 9:00am-12:00pm Monday-Friday To join the conversation, check us out on Twitter @WMAL and @ChrisPlanteShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices