Unless you nurture it, reverence is lost and in losing reverence you lose the comprehension of what sin is and what salvation is. The nature of God is affected by our attitude about God and His holiness.

There are interesting similarities between the feast at Simon's where Mary anointed Jesus, and his burial where He was anointed again. We need to pay attention to Jesus while we still have time.

There is power in words. Words can bring life, and words can bring death. God wants us to speak words of encouragement.

https://youtu.be/iTw4VJBx5BU Above is a lyric video we put together last week. This is a song from an album I recorded this summer that was supposed to be a solo project but then turned into a band.

I am so sad, angry and confused by the recent US election result that I created this: a fitting fanfare from the people of the rest of the world. It is puerile and disgusting.

This is a ~30 second excerpt from the full work, which is almost two minutes long. It was compiled entirely using the command line tool sox, including the stereo spatial effects. Yes, it's farts. Lots of farts. It shows the appropriate level of respect.

My spouse and I recently moved into a lovely big ole house in Amersfoort. We really enjoyed meeting those of you who came to the last meetup (June 2022), and would like to invite you to come join us for a hangout at our new place.

I'm thinking something like this: - A Saturday afternoon / evening in July or August - Food and drink - Patio games, video games setup for folks (we love a structured hangout or activities to have on-hand) thoughts?

Let's meet for Tuesday trivia night at Halcyon Brewing in Greenwood. Trivia starts at 7:30pm. Let's meet up at 7pm. Trivia is held in the room without the bar. The room may be empty at 7pm, but fills up as 7:30pm approaches. All ages. Maximum number of team members is 6, but we can split if there are more. No entry fee. Check Halcyon's Facebook page for category hints. Brush up on the latest news (regular, pop culture, and sports) beforehand, or not and we'll make our best guesses.

so the semi-random tour of europe that i've been doing has gotten me to paris through the 5th and i'd love to hang out with metafilter people here, should there be metafilter people here who'd love to hang out

• ten points to anyone who wants to go to a protest or rally, because it feels
  1. wrong not to do so, given the historical juncture we're at
  2. fun to do so, given the place we're at
• at least two hundred points to anyone who knows of a good punk-adjacent or riot grrl-adjacent concert to go to. other genres considered too
• also probably there's something super fun and weird to do that i'm not thinking of and you're thinking of and in that case let's do that thing
• failing all else it's fun to play board games and consume substances

Sundays, noon to three Pacific via Roll20 and Discord! Room for up to four players! Swords of the Serpentine is a fantasy role-playing game based on the GUMSHOE engine. It emphasizes investigative play, following leads, unraveling mysteries, and over-the-top swashbuckling action. To quote the blurb on the back of the rulebook: "a game of daring heroism, sly politics, and bloody savagery, set in a fantasy city rife with skullduggery and death". No experience necessary, we're all new to the game and learning together.

We are: two old guys and one of 'em's college-aged kid who have just wrapped up a Blades in the Dark campaign that ran 20-something sessions and are looking for a new game to play. You are: committed to playing weekly familiar with and able to access to both Discord and Roll20 reliably up for a role-playing game that emphasizes world-building through player participation interested in joining a friendly and welcoming table that likes sampling different systems (yeah, we gonna hafta play Eat The Reich pretty soon, I think...) If this sounds like a thing you'd be interested in doing, leave a comment below. I'll follow up with you via MeFi mail and we'll take it from there.

For those able to do so, donating or fundraising for charities seems like a good idea, especially with the holidays coming up. For USAmericans, this has the dual function of denying your tax $$ to the incoming government and helping the people that government wishes to harm. I thought it might be nice to crowdsource a thread of charities which do useful work for the communities under threat. Below are a few to start us off:

RAICES - Texas-based group helping immigrants and refugees United We Dream - working for immigrant youth Trans Lifeline - phone hotline, microgrants and legal help for trans folk The Trevor Project - helping LGBTQ+ youth NAACP legal defense fund - among other things, very useful for arrested racial justice protesters Southern Poverty Law Center - social, racial and economic justice National Network of Abortion Funds A couple of election integrity charities, since that will be crucial in the near future: Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law - civil rights, election integrity, voting rights VoteRiders - Election integrity, voting rights But that's just a few! Please post the orgs you know of doing good and useful work.

In switching from makingthenoise.com to floader.org, I’ve had to deal with the mess of creating new online identities on Vimeo, Soundcloud, and Bandcamp.  Most of these types of services only allow one unique email address per account which causes a dilema – do I create a new gmail account for every additional service? Meltmail.com solves […]

I’m moving back to http://www.makingthenoise.com Follow me there!

Since the coronavirus pandemic battered China's economy, tens of millions of urban and factory jobs have evaporated. Some workers and business owners have banded together to pressure companies or local governments for subsidies and payouts. But many of the newly unemployed have instead returned to their rural villages. China's vast countryside now serves as an unemployment sponge, soaking up floating migrant workers in temporary agricultural work on small family plots. "Say a factory used to hire 1,000 temporary workers; now, without new orders, these business owners can't afford to hire this many people," Yan Xiyun, a labor intermediary, told NPR. "The factory I usually go to in previous years could easily hire 2,000 people. Now there is scarcely anyone [on the factory floor]." Ten years ago, Yan left her own village near the small city of Zhumadian in Henan province for the first time and joined the migrant workforce. Now, she's a headhunter working on commission, placing thousands

Editor's note: This is an excerpt of Planet Money 's newsletter. You can sign up here . In summer of 1967, African Americans protested, marched, and rioted in cities across the country. The unrest convinced President Lyndon Johnson to set up the Kerner Commission, which spent about six months doing research, visiting slums, and holding hearings. In 1968, they published a provocative report that civil rights leader Jesse Jackson recently called "the last attempt to address honestly and seriously the structural inequalities that plague African Americans." "Segregation and poverty have created in the racial ghetto a destructive environment totally unknown to most white Americans," the Kerner report said. "What white Americans have never fully understood — but what the Negro can never forget — is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it." Fifty years later, Americans are taking to the

After the coronavirus lockdowns forced it to shut down its 345 U.S. theaters, Texas-based Cinemark in April decided to do what a lot of companies have done: borrow money by selling bonds. The sale was made easier by the fact that the Federal Reserve was lending out trillions of dollars to businesses and governments, providing a much-needed boost to the corporate debt market in an effort to prop up the economy. Even as it was borrowing money, Cinemark also announced a number of steps "to endure a prolonged period of no revenue." They included laying off 17,500 workers with no guarantee when they'll be rehired. During the current crisis, the Fed, which began a two-day meeting on Tuesday, has pulled out all the stops to keep the economy afloat, lowering interest rates to zero and starting a series of unprecedented and historic new lending facilities practically overnight. "It has taken what were already extraordinary, exceptional, unusual, unconventional tools and has expanded them even

Updated at 4:12 p.m. ET The Federal Reserve left interest rates near zero Wednesday and once again promised to deliver whatever monetary medicine it can to an economy that's badly ailing from the coronavirus pandemic. "The Federal Reserve is committed to using its full range of tools to support the U.S. economy in this challenging time," the central bank said in a statement . While noting that "financial conditions have improved, in part reflecting policy measures to support the economy," the Fed's rate-setting committee reiterated its intent to leave interest rates at rock-bottom levels, "until it is confident that the economy has weathered recent events and is on track to achieve its maximum employment and price stability goals." Notes released along with the committee's statement suggest no rate increases are expected at least through 2022. "We're not thinking about raising rates," Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said at a news conference. "We're not even thinking about thinking about

Our national fascination with sourdough starter appears to have stopped. Or at least slowed down a bit. The price of baking flour fell last month along with the price of eggs, suggesting that the baking craze that gripped hungry and housebound consumers in the early weeks of the coronavirus pandemic has cooled. "Sourdough is definitely a commitment," says Kristin Hoffman, who makes instructional YouTube videos for aspiring bakers. "I have heard a couple of people say that they really don't understand why somebody would want to put so much effort into a loaf of bread." Hoffman's Baker Bettie website saw a surge of interest from first-time bakers in late March and April, when tens of millions of Americans found themselves stuck at home with time on their hands. "I saw four to five times higher traffic than even during peak holiday-baking season," Hoffman says. "It has started to kind of level back out, now that things are reopening." Even if the bake-off was a turnoff for some, people

Editor's note: This is an excerpt of Planet Money 's newsletter. You can sign up here . Johannes Eisele / AFP via Getty Images The United States has been grappling with a global pandemic, an economic meltdown and massive protests — and yet, until recently, the stock market basically shrugged it all off. Between March 23 and late last week, the market surged 45% , erasing the drop it had seen at the start of the pandemic. That is, until last week, when apparently the market rediscovered that there's a freaking pandemic still going on. Public health experts have been warning for months now about the dangers of reopening without a solid plan for testing and tracing. But they're just uptight nerds, right? Economists consider the stock market a "leading indicator" of the economy, meaning it often signals where the real economy is headed. But it's a notoriously faulty signal. The MIT economist Paul Samuelson famously joked that big drops of the stock market had predicted nine out of the last

Jerome Powell has thrown himself, all guns blazing, into saving the nation's economy from the grips of the coronavirus recession. And yet the White House heaps ridicule on him. Last week, top White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said Powell had "probably the worst bedside manner of any Fed chairman in history. ... The old joke in the marketing thing is, if Jay Powell was going to market sushi, he'd sell it as cold, dead fish." And top White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said Powell needed to lighten up a little: "You know, a smile now and then. ... I'll talk with him, and we'll have some media training at some point." The scornful comments came after the stock market went into a tailspin last week when Powell shared his view on where the U.S. economy is heading. He pointed out that even as people were returning to their jobs, the country is "still going to face, probably, an extended period where it will be difficult for many people to find work." His warning, combined with

Editor's note: This is an excerpt of Planet Money 's newsletter. You can sign up here . Geoff Caddick / AFP via Getty Images Brooklyn Heights sits across the East River from Lower Manhattan. It's filled with multimillion-dollar brownstones and — usually — Range Rovers, Teslas and BMWs. These days it's easy to find parking. The brownstones are mostly dark at night. The place is a ghost town. And the neighborhood's sushi restaurants, Pilates studios, bistros and wine bars are either closed or mostly empty. It's a microcosm for what has been the driver of the pandemic recession: Rich people have stopped going out, destroying millions of jobs. That's one of the key insights of a blockbuster study that was dropped late last week by a gang of economists led by Harvard University's Raj Chetty. If you don't know who Chetty is, he's sort of like the Michael Jordan of policy wonks. He's a star economist. He and his colleagues assemble and crunch massive data sets and deliver insights that

Editor's note: This is an excerpt of Planet Money 's newsletter. You can sign up here . Timothy A. Clary / AFP via Getty Images Craft beer sales are surging at stores, but craft breweries are still struggling. Cheap beer is surging, but it's still losing market share. That's because the economics of the beer business are complicated. (And that's before you start drinking.) But the beer business can tell us a lot about the last two recessions. Take Natty Light (seriously, take it, we don't want it). Natty Light falls into a category that the beer biz calls "subpremium" — a category filled mostly with beer that closely resembles water. After over a decade of decline, the pandemic has pushed subpremium beer sales up big time. According to data from IRI, a market research company, store sales are up over 11% as compared with the same time period last year (early March to late June). This surge has happened *despite* the shutdown of colleges, frat parties and beer pong. Subpremium beer

Editor's note: This is an excerpt of Planet Money 's newsletter. You can sign up here . Pixabay Banks and laundromats are scrambling. Arcades and gumball machine operators are bracing for the worst. Grocery stores are rounding their prices to even dollars or rejecting cash altogether. The specter of the coin shortage lurks everywhere. Blame COVID-19. The U.S. Mint cut back on coin production this spring to keep its workers safe. Meanwhile, the economy is constipated. "With the closure of the economy, the flow of coins through the economy has ... kind of stopped," explained Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell last month. Coins sit idle in closed stores' cash registers and people's homes, and they're not making it to the banks and companies that need them for business. The coin shortage could be a rallying cry for a long-running movement that has lost steam in recent years: Kill the penny! Last year, almost 60% of the coins that the U.S. Mint churned out were pennies. 60 percent . It

Reg Smythe's Andy Capp was the greatest British newspaper strip of the 20th Century, but few people realise how much of his own troubled childhood Smythe poured into Andy and Flo's lives. Andy was essentially a portrait of Smythe's wastrel father, Flo a version of his formidable mother, and their neighbourhood a portrait of the pre-war Hartlepool where Smythe grew up. My new book traces Smythe's own biography, explores its parallels in Andy's world, and tackles the strip's early wife-beating jokes. There's also a look at how the balance of power has shifted between Andy and Flo down the years and my own analysis of just what made Smythe such an accomplished and stylish cartoonist.

Down The Tubes has already reviewed the book, calling it "a terrific re-examination of Andy Capp, smashing myths about the strip". Paul Gravett, the UK's leading comics critic, describes it as "a rich, revelatory study". MeFites discussed an earlier version of the book's Andy Capp material here.

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In which I write about Islam, spirituality, my Hajj pilgrimage in the summer of 2024, living as a USian in southern Spain, and change both voluntary and unwilled.

Example of what I write about: I just added a post about how fear of Satan, which was encouraged by the Catholic church and pop culture, scared me off from belief in ANYTHING Unseen (including God) for decades.

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Stark Raving Mab, the third book in my urban fantasy trilogy Gravity's Daughter is out as of yesterday. If you're intrigued by any of the following: action-heavy urban fantasy, less-traditional faeries, gravity-defying antics on public transit, Canadian settings or in-over-their-heads characters who will not give up sarcasm 'til you pry it from their cold, dead hands, then give the books a look or request them from your local library.

I did a projects post back in 2022 on the first book but I think I forgot to crow about the second last fall, because I have trouble regularly remembering to talk about myself. (Or even, uh, irregularly--like when I publish a literal book.)

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The polls in the headlines are alarming ... but polls have been way off in the past few years. This website documents some of the huge discrepancies between polling predictions and the actual results; notes some reasons for those errors; and suggests some other indicators that may offer a better sense of how the candidates are doing. The site's main message: don't panic - take action instead.

I was inspired to create this site after posting some of this information in various threads on MetaFilter.

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For the past almost 40 years, Treb Heining has engineered the balloon drops at every Republican National Convention and most Democratic National Conventions. I photographed how he and his team inflated and then dropped 100,000 balloons on the final night of the RNC this year in Milwaukee.

This is a story I'd been wanting to do since I noticed the balloons suspended from the ceiling during the 2016 conventions. I though, "Huh, there's got to be a story behind these balloons." What I found was Treb Heining, who got his start in balloons at age 15 selling balloons on foot at Disneyland. Heining went on to invent the balloon arch and built a balloon decorating business that now spans the globe. He invented the Glasshouse Balloon, a clear balloon surrounding the Mickey-shaped balloon sold at Disney resorts worldwide. And he's been in charge of the balloon drops at every RNC since 1988 and most DNCs since then (he was not involved in the 2004 DNC failure). He's also been in charge of the Times Square New Year's Eve confetti drop for more than 30 years and engineered balloon events at Super Bowls and Olympics opening ceremonies. For the conventions, Heining and a team of balloon decoration professionals and some local volunteers spend a couple days before the convention inflating and tying approximately 100,000 balloons by hand, putting them into giant net bags, and rigging them to the ceiling of the arena. Then, after the final speech on the last day of the convention, the balloons are dropped onto the delegates. I pitched this story to Bloomberg Businessweek in 2020, but the conventions were initially cancelled and then held in a modified form without balloon drops, so the story was killed. I pitched it again for this year, and it all worked out. Here's the Businessweek piece online and the larger edit with some videos and animated gifs on my website.

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I've done my best to collect and catalogue all of the storyboards from the production of 1983's Richard Marquand hit Return of the Jedi, driven by wanting to see what unfinished or cut scenes could be revealed.

You can read the entire screenplay, including deleted scenes while looking at the storyboards with a little commentary, or you can see all the storyboards in galleries. I've included some pages with behind the scenes photos and an explanation of my methods as well. If it's deleted scenes you're after, the bulk of those are found the Space Battle and the Rebel Attack sequences. Return of the Jedi ran into some time-and-budget-crunch problems in the last year of production, as well as technical issues, which resulted in some cuts being made to those sequences. Figuring out just what was cut and why was my original motive for the project, and although I'm still missing a lot of the storyboards from those cut sequences, there's enough to get the gist. Oh, and if you are, for some reason, in possession of copies of any of the missing storyboards, please get in touch!

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By Satan's forelock, it's Jabo's Annual Halloween Cartoon 2024. Not much to be scared about this year, amirite? So this year I've just drawn up my favorite cartoon scalawags mixed in with a liberal dose of tales about THE END OF THE WORLD! Nuthin' special and no worries about HOW WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE. Enjoy!

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Octothorpes is an open protocol that lets you put hashtags and backlinks on your own website to connect with other independent sites across Rings. We're launching a public beta today.

My friend Nik and I have been slowly rolling this out, starting at the last XOXO, and we just opened the public beta after letting a really fun project called Weird Web October used the protocol to connect their sites last month.

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I started a Substack to promote some liberal, progressive friendly views online.

At this time it feels like the right-wing echo chamber is growing larger and larger by the minute and progressive voices are drowned out. This obviously is a result of the devastating outcome a few days ago. My attempt is to offer some analysis and strategy. I will also try to cover the numbers in a bit more detail while also putting them in a narrative that is easily digestible (or so I hope).

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"Honeymoon in Oak Ridge" is a documentary that tells the story of my parents, two young newlyweds who unknowingly contributed to building the world's first atomic weapon.

In 1998, I returned with them to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where they shared on camera their wartime memories with pride and sorrow. Decades later, I sat down with their grandkids to hear what they think about their grandparents' role in this piece of history and how it affected our family and their view of history. The 20-minute documentary won the Jury Award for Best Short Documentary at the 2024 Uranium Film Festival. It's now available to stream on Docsville.com (free trial available).

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Toronto/Los Angeles-based indie pop artist Julian Daniel is making waves with his infectious new single, “do you feel me?,” a track he hopes will stir listeners' emotions through its seductive…

Eclectic Belgian singer/songwriter Sylvie Kreusch digs deep into the unbeaten path in her new LP Comic Trip. The 11-track album is adventurous, emotionally dark, and revealing all at once. Straying…

The sweet and soulful DJ Teddie Bear marries country music with the sounds of down south blues in his latest single “Southern Soul Twerk.” DJ Teddie Bear is a Georgia…

Rising indie artist Jacob Reddy released his first EP, 'These Streets Are Ours.' This EP is a powerful tribute to strength and modern-day rebellion. It features five songs that showcase…

French Horn Rebellion makes music that is an irresistible fusion of funky electronic pop and retro flair, where the grooves are as infectious as the melodies are catchy. Hailing from…

Today, we hear from young Native Americans on what the land back movement means to them. Then, a Coast Miwok family advocates for the native people of Tomales Bay.

Psychedelics and their potential to help heal are in the limelight lately. But can they help with collective healing? It’s an award winning episode of the Stoop podcast.

Residents in Richmond’s District 5 are calling for investment in arts and culture from their city leaders. And, in a new episode of Book It, the power of stories in medicine.

Even though they can’t vote, folks in California prisons will still be affected by this year's election. Uncuffed goes into San Quentin for this special elections episode.

Today, we hear how states can begin to repair fractured histories around slavery. Then, local experts weigh in on Kamala Harris’s track record. And, we consider the power of Black immigrant voters.

Today, London Breed’s reelection bid for San Francisco Mayor may be vulnerable to an upset. Then, the joy of transforming into iconic characters. And we revisit one of our local haunts.

Today, we get a glimpse into a local Goth scene and learn what makes it very Bay Area. And, we meet a florist who grows marigolds for Day of the Dead altars.

Today, we look into how elections are structured. How our ballots are designed. How ranked choice voting actually works. And, the people who work to ensure our elections run smoothly.

Today we go inside San Quentin’s mock elections. Then, we hear about comic books and mental health — for veterans. And, the passionate mix of music and movement of Flamenco.

Pastor Doug Batchelor takes you on a fascinating, faith-building exploration of the greatest and deepest of mysteries—the triune nature of our Creator God.

Life is a road. Jesus said you are either on the broad way to destruction or the narrow road to life.

The Bible says before the Lord comes again there will be an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. It won't be just the Spirit giving comfort and conviction but a baptism of the Spirit with signs and wonders and miracles.

Why should we go to church on Sabbath? How did Jesus observe Sabbath?