From rq, click for full size!
Affinity
Art, Fun, & Nonsense.
Zaz – Je Veux. This will have you moving!
From Nightjar, a breathtaking shot, click for full size!
© Nightjar, all rights reserved.
Jazzlet’s beautiful companions, click for full size.
Thorn.
Jake.
© Jazzlet, all rights reserved.
From Giliell, so cute – click for full size!
© Giliell, all rights reserved.
Wallnau’s “diagram”. Screen grab.
Oh, Lance is ranting again, and this time, had a “diagram” to illustrate his screeth.
During on online Bible study session on Friday, Wallnau drew an increasingly jumbled diagram in an effort to visually demonstrate how Trump is “under the authority of God” and protected by “the blood of Jesus Christ,” while Trump’s critics, who are “operating outside of the realm,” are being controlled by Satan.
“If you are outside of God’s authority,” Wallnau said, “you actually could be in the realm where Satan himself has access to your heart and to your mind, and that’s what I’m watching happen to millions of Americans now that despise what God has done.”
Personally, I don’t think most Americans despise anything Jehovah has done, because figments of the imagination don’t actually do anything. A whole lot of people are more than thoroughly disgusted by and with the Tiny Tyrant and his regime of money-sucking incompetents. It’s like watching the Keystone Mafia.
“If He puts Donald Trump into the White House,” he continued, “and you’re one of those people that actually has a visceral hatred of this man, if you continue to operate in this weird spirit, then what happens is Satan begins to take over more and more of your mind and more and more of your heart and you become more and more deranged. That’s what I am watching happen.”
From my reading, it seems like the only people deep into hysterical derangement are evangelical christians. Look at the recent idiocy over boy scouts – not even close to coherent. I can’t say I hate the Tiny Tyrant, but I’d certainly like to boot his old ass a long, long way from the white house. He can go back to his scams, and we can get a government back.
Wallnau went on to attack those “big-mouth Christians who have a problem with this president,” insisting that the proper role of Christians is to serve as intercessors for Trump, working to cover up any of his faults in order to prevent Satan from being able to use them to attack the president.
“Our jobs as intercessors is to be applying intercession so that we can do what we have to do to try to clean up that hole,” he said. “What the Lord is saying to us is, ‘What I want you to do is I don’t want you to focus on the faults, I want you to just go ahead and put a patch over that, put a Band-Aid over there so that that hole is covered.’”
“When you see a flaw in a leader, your job is to cover it,” Wallnau declared, warning that anyone who attempts to “judge a man of God, a man who God has anointed” will wind up opening themselves up to spiritual warfare and eventually having their own flaws and secrets exposed to the world.
How interesting this is, I had no idea that the job of christians is to cover up faults and crimes. The Tiny Tyrant is an amazingly sleazy person, I don’t think it’s really possible to cover everything up, and it certainly does not speak well of christians that their job is to cover up a vast amount of immorality. I have absolutely no problem whatsoever in judging the Tiny Tyrant, and I don’t have any flaws and secrets to expose, because I’m already open about my flaws, which are many, and I can’t be arsed with keeping skeletons in a closet. And here I thought that christians were supposed to pray and work to be better people, but no, their job is to be part of Cover Up Squad!
Even if you did get christians to do this, it couldn’t possibly work. To all appearances, the Tiny Tyrant doesn’t have a conscience, and constantly leaks his rotten behaviour all over the place, because he has problems seeing anything he does or says as being wrong.
“You’re going to reap what you sow,” he said. “You’re going to let the devil into your house.”
We’re already reaping the consequence of not paying attention, and letting a sleazy psychopath into the white house, and then not having anyone with the spine to kick his ass out. It will take decades to repair all the damage, assuming we get the opportunity to do so.
Blue. Branco, Portuguese for white. Click for full size!
© Nightjar, all rights reserved.
From rq: Before we get to the chapel, I have to walk you through the map tapestries and the odd creatures found therein. Amazing, so beautiful. Click for full size!
© rq, all rights reserved.
Stunning shots from Nightjar, click for full size!
© Nightjar, all rights reserved.
A grand shot of a gorgeous Blue Tit from Giliell, click for full size!
© Giliell, all rights reserved.
Goodness me, the whole world is unraveling, everything is going to go to hell because girls. Not terribly surprising when it comes to christian thinking, females of any type are always the evil problem to blame.
The American Family Association released a video in which Tim Wildmon and Ed Vitaglino, the AFA’s president and executive vice president, respectively, railed against the news that thousands of girls have joined the Boy Scouts after the organization began admitting them earlier this year.
I went and read the small article about this, and yes, 3,000 girls have joined up. There was a mention of a brother and sister who excitedly joined up, they want to be the first siblings to achieve eagle scout. I don’t think much of boy scouts, but that’s kind of nice, for siblings to be able to be together in such a venture. I’m certainly not seeing the horrible evil which Tim & Ed have conjured up. Perhaps they’ll explain…
“This is, I think, a part of the ongoing war against the Judeo-Christian worldview, the way God has established mankind, male and female,” Vitaglino said, asserting that “the secular progressive … materialistic worldview based in evolution” is waging a “war against God and His divine order.”
Uh, nope. That’s not helping to clarify at all. All girls aren’t going to stop being girls because they joined a scouting organization. All boys aren’t going to stop being boys because they’re now in a co-ed scouting organization. I don’t get at all how this could possibly go against old Jehovah. I have no idea what evolution has to do with anything. It’s not like the scouts were a creationist thing. Let’s see, shall we?
It is a common belief that the BSA does prohibit members who are atheist and agnostic based on its “duty to God” principle and that members (adult and youth) agree with the Declaration of Religious Principle in the bylaws. However, the BSA has had Buddhist troops since 1920 and many Buddhists are atheists or agnostics. The BSA also signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Unitarian Universalist Association in 2016 which specifically gives ultimate authority over a participant’s spiritual welfare to the individual Unitarian Universalist congregation. The MOU also specifically includes within Unitarian Universalist chartered troops Humanism as an acceptable form of spirituality as well as Earth-centered religions. [Wikipedia.]
Doesn’t look to me like it’s any sort of made-up war against your pathetic god, gentlemen. Of course, if there’s willful ignorance to be had, you’ll always find it in christians.
“So, you think this is basically satanic?” Wildmon asked.
“This is Romans 1,” Vitaglino responded. “When any individual or community or nation, any culture, ignores God or refuses to honor Him and give Him the glory He deserves, then the Bible makes clear in Romans 1 that they are then given over to a deepening darkness and depravity and, unfortunately, that’s what we’re seeing happen in America.”
Oh FFS, give the satanic panic a fucking rest already. How in the fuckety fuck is an organization going co-ed ignoring a god or refusing honour and glory? I imagine all the christian kids in the boy scouts do all that idiotic shit, and it’s really beyond the pale to consider this as depraved in any way. If anything, this might really help boys and young men to truly understand that girls and young women are people, not objects, and people with ideas and abilities of their own. If this helps in even the smallest of ways to reduce sexism, it will be a very good thing indeed. And christians really need to stop being so bloody hysterical over every little thing.
Pepper saying hello to staff at the Smithsonian Castle. (all photos courtesy Smithsonian).
The next time you visit a Smithsonian museum, the first greeting you get may come from a gleaming, four-foot-tall android extending their hand. This would be Pepper, one of 25 humanoid robots that were introduced two days ago to six Smithsonian spaces, from the Hirshhorn Museum to the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Donated by their engineers at Softbank Robotics, the platoon of Peppers is intended to enhance the visitor experience and ensure that daily operations run smoothly.
Pepper, which was designed to interact with humans, is the first bot capable of recognizing our emotions. These models already work in an array of industries around the world, serving as receptionists in Belgian hospitals and even as priests in Japan that lead funerary rituals. While the robot has been on display in museums, the Smithsonian now represents the first museum complex to actually use these wide-eyed automata for their services.
“We see them as a new tool for the docents to use, especially since they are always paired with a person,” a spokesperson for Smithsonian told Hyperallergic, noting that the Peppers are “absolutely not replacing docents.”
Softbank Robotics donated the Peppers for an experimental, pilot program intended to help the Smithsonian solve problems, from boosting visitorship to “under-attended galleries” and encouraging greater engagement with artworks. While the robots can provide helpful information by answering commonly asked questions, they can also indulge in more lighthearted activities for which human docents do not always have the time (or patience); visitors can ask Pepper to dance, play games, and even pose for a selfie. While the robots currently do not have captioned speech, the Smithsonian said that it is working to caption images that appear on their screens and “will continue with our software partners to make Pepper as accessible as possible.”
Very cool! I’d like to meet Pepper. You can read and see much more at Hyperallergic.
