SMILE EMPTY SOUL опубликовали официальное видео с текстом на песню "We All Fall Down", которая взята из нового альбома Swan Song, релиз которого должен состояться в этом году.
#Smile_Empty_Soul #SmileEmptySoul #GrungeMetal #Grunge_Metal
Видео: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnJyX1cSpOk

My son Cole, pictured here as a goofy kid many years ago, is now six feet six inches tall and in college. Cole needed a letter of recommendation recently so he turned to an old family friend who, in turn, used ChatGPT to generate the letter, which he thought was remarkably good. As a guy who pretends to write for a living, I read it differently. ChatGPT’s letter was facile but empty, the type of letter you would write for someone you’d never met. It said almost nothing about Cole other than that he’s a good kid. Artificial Intelligence is good for certain things, but blind letters of reference aren’t among them. The key problem here has to do with Machine Learning. ChatGPT’s language model […]

Have you ever found something you started writing but never finished? Here's something I started in October 2014. I've just rediscovered it in July 2020....

Papercutz has announced Flash Gordon: The Girl from Infinity, which reimagines the iconic character, for release in 2025.

Another world building exploration with AI… this time a floating bubble city.

The post The Floating Bubble City appeared first on Stuck in Customs.

Although often confused with guilt and shame, remorse is actually a much higher calibrating "emotion." It's the 21st Century alternative to feeling bad about yourself, and making others around you feel bad too.

It not only feels better and helps you move forward in your life, but it is healing for the Earth... and as we ride the 2012 Transition, Mother Earth needs all the help we can give her!

This article explains how it works, and why you are worthy of forgiveness.

Remorse is a method to heal yourself, and others, after making a mistake.

After all, anything that brings a feeling of remorse is a mistake -- just a mistake. Did you know that's the origin of the word "sin"? "Sin" was an archery term; it means missing the mark. That leaves a lot more possibility for positive growth, doesn't it!

So you don't need to berate yourself for eternity. There is nothing to berate yourself for if you didn't know any better, or if you did the best you could.

And I believe we always do the best we can, with what we have in the moment.

We're not perfect. Sometimes we do things we're not proud of. But, in the moment, that was undoubtedly the best that we could do.

Maybe you gave in to your meaner impulses. If you could have held yourself to a higher ideal in that moment, you would have done so. What would you have to gain, by not?

Maybe you didn't know how to do better. You can only work with what you know.

God does not expect you to know what you do not yet know!

For whatever reason -- fatigue, stress, anxiety, confusion, distraction, etc -- maybe you didn't do the best you hoped for. Maybe it wasn't as good as you could have done another day.

But you obviously did the best you could in that moment.

Why would anyone do less than that?

God doesn't need you to burn in hell for it, not even the hell of your own harsh thoughts. She only wants you to learn from the process, and to use it to grow. That's what remorse is all about.

There are four parts to the process of remorse.

The first part is a pang in your Heart. There is an energy there, call it an emotion if you like, that signals you are not happy with your actions.

From here, many people get derailed into guilt, instead of continuing the process of remorse.

The second part is the most important, the core of remorse...

You accept that you made a mistake. And you make an unemotional, practical assessment of your actions.

When your actions and choices don't live up to your ideals or ethics... you figure out how you could do better, discover what was moving in you (probably subconsciously) that caused that action, and -- here's the critical bit -- resolve to do better next time.

Remorse is calm and determined. Rather than destroying your self-respect, remorse enhances it. It provides you with the opportunity to grow, to live up to your ideals.

It recognises that within you there is a perfect being, capable of the best.

And that there is always another opportunity to try.

Contrast that with shame, which says that you are worthless and hopeless. There's just nowhere good to go, from there!

Remorse doesn't take the mistake personally. It sees an action as wrong, but not you as a person.

Remorse knows that people can't accurately, honestly be judged in terms of "wrong" and "bad."

The next step is always making amends. You must undo the error, to the best of your ability. And apologise, if it won't make things worse.

We must be clear -- this step has nothing to do with being forgiven by another person. Whether they forgive you or not is about them and their process, and is not about you.

To seek someone's forgiveness when they aren't ready to give it can be a further harm.

You fix the mistake if you can. That is the only purpose of this step.

Inherent in this process is self-forgiveness. You see a mistake, you acknowledge it, you figure out what went wrong, you fix it if you can, and you determine to not make that mistake again.

When you've done all that, forgiveness is a lot easier.

You can forgive yourself, because you know you aren't a bad person who intentionally did wrong... and because you are doing your best not to slip up that way in the future.

No one is perfect. No one is expected, by the Divine, not to make mistakes. On the contrary, that's often how we learn and grow.

That's all the Divine wants of you. Not perfection. But learning and growing from your slip-ups.

So you can accept that you did the best you were able to, at the time. And forgive yourself, for being human and humanly fallible.

If you get stuck in guilt, look for the underlying shame. Shame is like Velcro to guilt. It tells you that you deserve to feel terrible guilt, that you are not worthy of forgiveness or compassion or kindness.

But shame LIES.

You are worthy of forgiveness, because you are not a flawed person.You are Divinity tasting life as a mortal individual -- nothing else.

It doesn't matter what your family or coworkers or boss thinks of you. It doesn't matter how you've been treated by others -- that's nothing to do with YOU, that's all about the (human) blindness of others.

You are infinitely worthy and loveable!

And when others can't see that it's only because they haven't realised that they are infinitely worthy and loveable. When people get tied down, in their minds, into one little frail animal body and one small human life, all kinds of such misconceptions arise!

But it's not the truth.

The truth is that you are eternal -- learning and growing and polishing yourself on challenge after challenge, life after life.

The soul that is truly you is infinitely worthy and Divine. The body and mind you think of as you are only a costume that put on for a while, and then point aside, to go home for dinner and a bath, a good rest, to get up and come play again.

So how do you as a mere mortal forgive yourself?

The same way you forgive anyone... With compassion for your human frailty: you really are doing our best with what you have. With perspective: understanding that this life is a playground and schoolroom, and not the life-or-death struggle it seems. With determination to not make the same mistake again.

With Bright Blessings,

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Call center technology is constantly improving. Most modern call-centers record at least some portion of the conversations they initiate. Who listens to these recordings. And what eventually happens to them?

What does this mean for charitable solicitations?

A typical call for me starts something like this;

Me: Hello I'm Henry calling from XXX organization on behalf of the Save the Giant Sequoia Tree foundation. Hows it going today Mr X?

Mr X: Fine, how are you today?

Me; I'm good thanks for asking, not a lot of people do. (this gets a chuckle as often as not, and its true.)

Me: Mr X, I'm going to try to keep things quick today but first I do need to know that this call could be monitored and is recorded for my quality.

Mr X: Ah go ahead the damn government is recording everything we say anyway....


Conversations can go into anywhere from a mild rant against the Bush administration to an all out call for violence made in jest, typical stuff you might hear on The Bill Mahr show. But what the Donor may not realize is that that conversation doesn't necessarily go away, ever.

Ive done fundraising for organizations like the Democratic National Committee, The A.C.L.U and the Human Rights Campaign. At the start of each call we inform donors that their call could be recorded to ensure quality control.

A.C.L.U donors are the most likely to hang up the phone at that point caring too much about their right to privacy to allow themselves to be recorded.

But what about the callers who don't hang up? Ive spoken to extremely opinionated people who
have pulled no punches when it come to their opinion on the current presidential administration, the war on terror, and other highly charged issued.

Politicians have been cursed threats have been made as well as off color jokes.

Could this information be used against a person?

With the warrant-less wiretapping that we know is going on in this country,how smart is it for organizations to save recordings of people?

Donors tend to say anything to an anonymous fundraiser on over the phone. But is it really anonymous. Do the donors have a right to know what becomes of their voice recordings.

I think that call-centers, especially in the fundraising industry, should have a published policy on what they will and will not do with Donor's information, including voice recordings.


Technology and political realities have raced beyond past practices. Its time for call-centers to catch up.

What I can tell you as a professional fundraiser is that.

• You have the right to end the conversation at any time, although I and your organization wish you wouldn't.
• You have the right to request more information about where I'm calling from and what my particular call-center will do with any of your information, including recordings of your voice. ( If your the curious type this might be fun to do anyway)
• The Front-line people who call you, me, have no control over when or why you are called; its all done by computer.
• The national no call-list has little bearing on non-profits, or their agents, (me). Call-centers that do fundraising have their own internal do-not-call lists; ask to be on it and we are obligated to put you on it. You should also let your charities know, by phone, or in writing, that you don't want to be called, or to have your name sold or traded to other organizations.
• Reputable fundraisers charge a flat fee per call. Yes or no, we get the same amount for making the call. It doesn't have to be this way however, Some fundraising agents can keep 80% (or more!) of the revenue a solicitation campaign generates. You have the right to know just what those percentages are; if the person you are speaking to doesn't know, ask for a supervisor.
• Some states also have laws that obligate fundraising groups to send a written copy of this information to any donor that asks, you'll need to contact your attorney general's office to see if your state is one.
• Last note; Federal law prohibits us from recording your credit card information, this is the one part of the call that isn't recorded.

I hope this quick rundown of the issues stirs some discussion. Ill follow up with more on telephone fundraising in the coming days.