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More of my favorite queen in my favorite starwars outfit 🥰

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And speaking of scurvy, I am eternally amused by the thing where some ancient form of healing that was born in a time where people didn't know exactly how the human body works, or what causes it to stop working sometimes, that still somehow worked. Like how so many old folk medicinal plants were listed as a cure for various ailments that - from a modern view - are clearly just symptoms of scurvy, and the plant itself is rich in vitamin C.

I recall reading some story, no recollection of the exact time or place, where the king of a large empire suffered from constant horrible headaches and was incapable of falling asleep unless drugged or blackout drunk. Sick of taking temporary fixes to dull the pain and having to be sedated every night, he called up some old sage healer who was said to know how to fix things nobody else could explain, and the healer heard his symptoms and went

"Hmm. You spend too much time being a king. Your skull is packed so full of kingly thoughts that they don't all fit in there and that's why your head is in pain. You need to spend time not being a king." And prescribed him to schedule three days every month where he must go to a peasant village where nobody knows he's the king, live with a family there under a fake name and identity, work in the rice fields with them, eating the same food and sleeping on the same mats. Absolutely nobody is allowed to address him as the king, speak to him of any royal or political matters, and he himself is not allowed to think any kingly thoughts or think of himself as the king.

And naturally, this worked. Taking a regular scheduled break from a highly stressful office desk job to completely decompress, paired with physical exercise in the form of hard but simple physical labour, plain and simple food and Just Not Thinking About Your Fucking Job All The Time does help chronic stress, which here was worded as "spending too much time being a king clogs your brain."

Sometimes you do have ghosts in your blood, though I'm not entirely sure whether you should do cocaine about it.

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Guys, is it colonialism when missionaries come FROM Kazakhstan, China, and Africa TO the west? Because that's what they're doing these days.

still thinking about "decolonising" missionary work.

the way you decolonise missionary work is by not doing missionary work

the way you decolonise missionaries is like this:

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Gems from Black History month so far:

My students, reading quotes from Malcolm X: “Ms. T, isn’t it February? Shouldn’t you be teaching us Black History?”

Me, pulling up a picture of Malcolm X: “Please explain to me what color this man is.”

Elijah: “Light gray.”

DJ, paying more attention to the quotes: “Ms. T, how come everyone goes to prison and comes out Muslim? My uncle did that.”

Me: “That really seems to be a question for your uncle. I can talk to you about Black nationalism in the fifties, though, if that helps?”

We move on to Rosa Parks. I attempt to explain about the center of the bus. In an attempt to simplify things, I call it the mixed section of the bus, since Black people could sit there until the white section filled up.

Elijah, staring at a picture of Ms. Parks thoughtfully. “Ohhh, so she was mixed. They had their own part of the bus?”

Me: “No, but I’m intrigued by your social structure. At any rate, the front filled up and so she was told to stand up -”

Deon, who has absolutely not been paying that much attention, filled with indignation on Rosa’s behalf: “But that’s racist!”

The rest of the class, staring at Deon: “…. Duh.”

“I have good news!” I announce to Deon, waving my hands jazz style. “Many other people agreed with you, and that’s why they had the Civil Rights Movement!”

DJ, just now tuning back in: “Did they kill Rosa Parks?”

Jamie, perhaps the only student who read the board: “She died at ninety-two.”

DJ, horrified: “Why would they kill an old lady?!”

Jamie, rolling her eyes so hard her head moves: “She wasn’t ninety-two on the bus, you dumba- uh, sorry Ms. T, look at the picture!”

Kimani, somehow looking at a picture of Frederick Douglass instead: “That’s Rosa Parks? She looks like a man!”

Shamia: “That’s Frederick Douglass. I took off my bonnet yesterday and my mom said I looked just like him.”

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Okay, so listen, I do respect this sentiment

HOWEVER

I am kind of getting annoyed by all this focus on the men needing fixing and how hot it is that the men fixed themselves because Jane Austen wrote just as many women who need reformation as men. Pride & Prejudice is about 2 (two) people, a man and woman, who both need to change. Emma is the only one who needs to change in Emma, Mr. Knightley's arc is pretty much just about realizing he loves her anyway. Both Mary and Henry Crawford need to change in Mansfield Park (and they don't) and it's the male character, Edmund, who is saved from an imprudent "I can fix her" marriage, Fanny just says no. Marianne in Sense & Sensibility does need to grow up and Willoughby can't be fixed so she should choose the man who doesn't need fixing.

I realize on some level that the audience is mostly female but isn't it kind of toxic to imply that women don't need to grow and change and learn? Because I know I do. What happened to humility?

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There's a funny parallel in how the most offensive part of Christianity in the Roman Empire is the same as it is today…

'Jesus is A God, sure, maybe even your favourite, maybe one of the best ones! But the ONLY God? That's deeply offensive to my gods and treason to Cesaer!'

'Yeah sure Christianity is good for you, I'm glad it makes you happy. But what do you mean Buddishm isn't true? You really think Christianity is the only valid faith? That's deeply offensive and exclusionary!'

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Official artwork for Revenge of the Sith’s 20th anniversary

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This is why I don't like AI - it's making us all dumber.

Something I don't think we talk enough about in discussions surrounding AI is the loss of perseverance.

I have a friend who works in education and he told me about how he was working with a small group of HS students to develop a new school sports chant. This was a very daunting task for the group, in large part because many had learning disabilities related to reading and writing, so coming up with a catchy, hard-hitting, probably rhyming, poetry-esque piece of collaborative writing felt like something outside of their skill range. But it wasn't! I knew that, he knew that, and he worked damn hard to convince the kids of that too. Even if the end result was terrible (by someone else's standards), we knew they had it in them to complete the piece and feel super proud of their creation.

Fast-forward a few days and he reports back that yes they have a chant now... but it's 99% AI. It was made by Chat-GPT. Once the kids realized they could just ask the bot to do the hard thing for them - and do it "better" than they (supposedly) ever could - that's the only route they were willing to take. It was either use Chat-GPT or don't do it at all. And I was just so devastated to hear this because Jesus Christ, struggling is important. Of course most 14-18 year olds aren't going to see the merit of that, let alone understand why that process (attempting something new and challenging) is more valuable than the end result (a "good" chant), but as adults we all have a responsibility to coach them through that messy process. Except that's become damn near impossible with an Instantly Do The Thing app in everyone's pocket. Yes, AI is fucking awful because of plagiarism and misinformation and the environmental impact, but it's also keeping people - particularly young people - from developing perseverance. It's not just important that you learn to write your own stuff because of intellectual agency, but because writing is hard and it's crucial that you learn how to persevere through doing hard things.

Write a shitty poem. Write an essay where half the textual 'evidence' doesn't track. Write an awkward as fuck email with an equally embarrassing typo. Every time you do you're not just developing that particular skill, you're also learning that you did something badly and the world didn't end. You can get through things! You can get through challenging things! Not everything in life has to be perfect but you know what? You'll only improve at the challenging stuff if you do a whole lot of it badly first. The ability to say, "I didn't think I could do that but I did it anyway. It's not great, but I did it," is SO IMPORTANT for developing confidence across the board, not just in these specific tasks.

Idk I'm just really worried about kids having to grow up in a world where (for a variety of reasons beyond just AI) they're not given the chance to struggle through new and challenging things like we used to.

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hashtag scripture songs

Ephesians 3:20-21 // Calkin, 'My God is So Big' // Isaiah 55:8-9 // Psalm 50:10-11 // Psalm 19:1-4 // C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe // City Alight, 'My God is All I Need'

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Too good not to reblog

the objectivity of truth does not give you license to be cold and unfeeling

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Casually asks ‘who domesticated grain in your fantasy world?’ but while ripping her shirt off with a WWE stage and a roaring crowd just behind and slightly to the left. 

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Actual heresy (saw it in a reblog chain). I stared at their post in disbelief for a few seconds and decided I didn't need to deal with this clown.

I block Mormons on principle as well.

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Get yourself a fabric store that will light your fabric on fire for you

No but legit I asked what the fiber content of something was and the guy didn’t know so he cut a chunk off and lit it on fire and felt the ashes and was like. Yeah this is mostly cotton with a lil bit of silk. And that was the moment I knew. This is it. This is the fabric store for me. Also that guy is marriage material. Not for me but damn some person is gonna be so happy with him.

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I remember hearing about a group of Polish evangelicals who drove down to the Ukrainian border to pick up their fellow church members. Those Ukrainian church members had driven or walked all the way to the border without a break, but the following morning they woke up in Warsaw. Several of them went on to Germany as well. I know Ukrainian refugees from this group who now live in Ireland, Liverpool and London.

But now I think of it, those guys must have gotten into their cars very quickly once the invasion started, because they were at the border within one of two days of the war starting.

looking back at the first days of the full-scale invasion on ukraine, I feel just a little baffled at my blithe confidence that everything would turn out fine within a week, and anyway we're not in danger... because it kind of wasn't true. putin certainly imagined ukraine would surrender immediately and if they did, it's anyone's guess where they would have stopped. but — there were military planes all over the sky, at the very beginning, and my classmates would grow tense and fear it might be russia, and I would go "don't be silly, it's nato reconnaissance". and I was right in that it certainly wouldn't start with bombings in the middle of the day, not this time either — but I was so sure our safety extended all the way... and it's strange now. of course, in the end I was right, and I just missed a few days of unnecessary anxiety, but...

and there were police vehicles stationed on every road too, in warsaw, friday the 25th. I still don't know why, what they were preparing for.