#Papal plane

[thepastisalreadywritten]

[zvaigzdelasas]

Pope Francis on Friday described the choice US voters must make in the presidential election as one between the “lesser of two evils,” deeming former President Donald Trump’s anti-migrant policies and Vice President Kamala Harris’ support of abortion rights as both being “against life.”

“One must choose the lesser of two evils. Who is the lesser of two evils? That lady or that gentleman? I don’t know,” Francis said during a press conference on the papal plane, referring to Harris and Trump. “Everyone with a conscience should think on this and do it.”

Net zero endorsement [13 Sep 14]

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The impoverished imagination of neoliberal climate “solutions

This morning (Oct 31) at 10hPT, the Internet Archive is livestreaming my presentation on my recent book, The Internet Con.

There is only one planet in the known universe capable of sustaining human life, and it is rapidly becoming uninhabitable by humans. Clearly, this warrants bold action – but which bold action should we take?

After half a century of denial and disinformation, the business lobby has seemingly found climate religion and has joined the choir, but they have their own unique hymn: this crisis is so dire, they say, that we don't have the luxury of choosing between different ways of addressing the emergency. We have to do "all of the above" – every possible solution must be tried.

In his new book Dark PR, Grant Ennis explains that this "all of the above" strategy doesn't represent a change of heart by big business. Rather, it's part of the denial playbook that's been used to sell tobacco-cancer doubt and climate disinformation:

https://darajapress.com/publication/dark-pr-how-corporate-disinformation-harms-our-health-and-the-environment

The point of "all of the above" isn't muscular, immediate action – rather, it's a delaying tactic that creates space for "solutions" that won't work, but will generate profits. Think of how the tobacco industry used "all of the above" to sell "light" cigarettes, snuff, snus, and vaping – and delay tobacco bans, sin taxes, and business-euthanizing litigation. Today, the same playbook is used to sell EVs as an answer to the destructive legacy of the personal automobile – to the exclusion of mass transit, bikes, and 15-minute cities:

https://thewaroncars.org/2023/10/24/113-dark-pr-with-grant-ennis/

As the tobacco and car examples show, "all of the above" is never really all of the above. Pursuing "light" cigarettes to reduce cancer is incompatible with simply banning tobacco; giving everyone a personal EV is incompatible with remaking our cities for transit, cycling and walking.

When it comes to the climate emergency, "all of the above" means trying "market-based" solutions to the exclusion of directly regulating emissions, despite the poor performance of these "solutions."

The big one here is carbon offsets, which allows companies to make money by promising not to emit carbon that they would otherwise emit. The idea here is that creating a new asset class will unleash the incredible creativity of markets by harnessing the greed of elite sociopaths to the project of decarbonization, rather of the prudence of democratically accountable lawmakers.

Carbon offsets have not worked: they have been plagued by absolutely foreseeable problems that have not lessened, despite repeated attempts to mitigate them.

For starters, carbon offsets are a classic market for lemons. The cheapest way to make a carbon offset is to promise not to emit carbon you were never going to emit anyway, as when fake charities like the Nature Conservancy make millions by promising not to log forests that can't be logged because they are wildlife preserves:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/18/greshams-carbon-law/#papal-indulgences

Then there's the problem of monitoring carbon offsetting activity. Like, what happens when the forest you promise not to log burns down? If you're a carbon trader, the answer is "nothing." That burned-down forest can still be sold as if it were sequestering carbon, rather than venting it to the atmosphere in an out-of-control blaze:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/26/aggregate-demand/#murder-offsets

When you bought a plane ticket and ticked the "offset the carbon on my flight" box and paid an extra $10, I bet you thought that you were contributing to a market that incentivized a reduction in discretionary, socially useless carbon-intensive activity. But without those carbon offsets, SUVs would have all but disappeared from American roads. Carbon offsets for Tesla cars generated billions in carbon offsets for Elon Musk, and allowed SUVs to escape regulations that would otherwise have seen them pulled from the market:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/24/no-puedo-pagar-no-pagara/#Rat

What's more, Tesla figured out how to get double the offsets they were entitled to by pretending that they had a working battery-swap technology. This directly translated to even more SUVs on the road:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Tesla,_Inc.#Misuse_of_government_subsidies

Harnessing the profit motive to the planet's survivability might sound like a good idea, but it assumes that corporations can self-regulate their way to a better climate future. They cannot. Think of how Canada's logging industry was allowed to clearcut old-growth forests and replace them with "pines in lines" – evenly spaced, highly flammable, commercially useful tree-farms that now turn into raging forest fires every year:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/16/murder-offsets/#pulped-and-papered

The idea of "market-based" climate solutions is that certain harmful conduct should be disincentivized through taxes, rather than banned. This makes carbon offsets into a kind of modern Papal indulgence, which let you continue to sin, for a price. As the outstanding short video Murder Offsets so ably demonstrates, this is an inadequate, unserious and immoral response to the urgency of the issue:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/14/for-sale-green-indulgences/#killer-analogy

Offsets and other market-based climate measures aren't "all of the above" – they exclude other measures that have better track-records and lower costs, because those measures cut against the interests of the business lobby. Writing for the Law and Political Economy Project, Yale Law's Douglas Kysar gives some pointed examples:

https://lpeproject.org/blog/climate-change-and-the-neoliberal-imagination/

For example: carbon offsets rely on a notion called "contrafactual carbon," this being the imaginary carbon that might be omitted by a company if it wasn't participating in offsets. The number of credits a company gets is determined by the difference between its contrafactual emissions and its actual emissions.

But the "contrafactual" here comes from a business-as-usual world, one where the only limit on carbon emissions comes from corporate executives' voluntary actions – and not from regulation, direct action, or other limits on corporate conduct.

Kysar asks us to imagine a contrafactual that depends on "carbon upsets," rather than offsets – one where the limits on carbon come from "lawsuits, referenda, protests, boycotts, civil disobedience":

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cif-green/2010/aug/29/carbon-upsets-offsets-cap-and-trade

If we're really committed to "all of the above" as baseline for calculating offsets, why not imagine a carbon world grounded in foreseeable, evidence-based reality, like the situation in Louisiana, where a planned petrochemical plant was canceled after a lawsuit over its 13.6m tons of annual carbon emissions?

https://earthjustice.org/press/2022/louisiana-court-vacates-air-permits-for-formosas-massive-petrochemical-complex-in-cancer-alley

Rather than a tradeable market in carbon offsets, we could harness the market to reward upsets. If your group wins a lawsuit that prevents 13.6m tons of carbon emissions every year, it will get 13.6 million credits for every year that plant would have run. That would certainly drive the commercial imaginations of many otherwise disinterested parties to find carbon-reduction measures. If we're going to revive dubious medieval practices like indulgences, why not champerty, too?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champerty_and_maintenance

That is, if every path to a survivable planet must run through Goldman-Sachs, why not turn their devious minds to figuring out ways to make billions in tradeable credits by suing the pants off oil companies?

There are any number of measures that rise to the flimsy standards of evidence in support of offsets. Like, we're giving away $85/ton in free public money for carbon capture technologies, despite the lack of any credible path to these making a serious dent in the climate situation:

https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insights/latest-news/energy-transition/072523-ira-turbocharged-carbon-capture-tax-credit-but-challenges-persist-experts

If we're willing to fund untested longshots like carbon capture, why not measures that have far better track-records? For example, there's a pretty solid correlation between the presence of women in legislatures and on corporate boards and overall reductions in carbon. I'm the last person to suggest that the problems of capitalism can be replaced by replacing half of the old white men who run the world with women, PoCs and queers – but if we're willing to hand billions to ferkakte scheme like carbon capture, why not subsidize companies that pack their boards with women, or provide campaign subsidies to women running for office? It's quite a longshot (putting Liz Truss or Marjorie Taylor-Greene on your board or in your legislature is no way to save the planet), but it's got a better evidentiary basis than carbon capture.

There's also good evidence that correlates inequality with carbon emissions, though the causal relationship is unclear. Maybe inequality lets the wealthy control policy outcomes and tilt them towards permitting high-emission/high-profit activities. Maybe inequality reduces the social cohesion needed to make decarbonization work. Maybe inequality makes it harder for green tech to find customers. Maybe inequality leads to rich people chasing status-enhancing goods (think: private jet rides) that are extremely carbon-intensive.

Whatever the reason, there's a pretty good case that radical wealth redistribution would speed up decarbonization – any "all of the above" strategy should certainly consider this one.

Kysar's written a paper on this, entitled "Ways Not to Think About Climate Change":

https://political-theory.org/resources/Documents/Kysar.Ways%20Not%20to%20Think%20About%20Climate%20Change.pdf

It's been accepted for the upcoming American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy conference on climate change:

https://political-theory.org/13257256

It's quite a bracing read! The next time someone tells you we should hand Elon Musk billions to in exchange for making it possible to legally manufacture vast fleets of SUVs because we need to try "all of the above," send them a copy of this paper.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/31/carbon-upsets/#big-tradeoff

[tanadrin]

so the problem with getting yourself excommunicated as a catholic is that the church is a massive international bureaucracy and unless you're already pretty high up in its hierarchy it's unlikely to notice or care about you. that said, some penalties in canon law are "latae sententiae," that is, considered to impose themselves the instant a law is violated. so you can technically excommunicate yourself by doing any of the following:

confer a holy order on a woman, or as a woman attempt to receive one

throw away the consecrated eucharist, or take it for sacreligious purposes

(priests only) absolve your accomplice in adultery

(priests only) break the seal of confession

(bishops only) ordain someone a bishop without the papal mandate

get ordained a bishop without the papal mandate

get an abortion

use physical force against the pope

although technically any accomplice without whose assistance you could not have committed the act also gets excommunicated on the same basis, which means that you can streamline the process by crowdfunding someone's plane ticket to Rome to go punch the pope

now, i wonder what happens if i trick people in to believing i'm a bishop and that i'm ordaining them a bishop without the papal mandate. they think they're getting ordained without the papal mandate--do they suffer automatic excommunication while i get away scot-free? this seems like an abusable loophole

[ghouljett]

Papal Robes

I had my very first ritual ever last night, It was honestly one of the best nights of my life. I drew this on the plane to Houston.

This week was half devastating, with the Tampa show (my original ritual) getting cancelled for a Hurricane, to having the opportunity to fly to Texas very last minute.

If you have ghost, you truly do have everything 🩷

[cruger2984]

THE DESCRIPTION OF SAINT JOHN HENRY NEWMAN The Patron of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham in England and Wales Feast Day: October 9

John Henry Newman, the 19th-century's most important English-speaking Catholic theologian, spent the first half of his life as an Anglican and the second half as a Roman Catholic. He was a priest, popular preacher, writer, and eminent theologian in both churches.

Born in London, England, he studied at Oxford's Trinity College, was a tutor at Oriel College, and for 17 years was vicar of the university church, St. Mary the Virgin. He eventually published eight volumes of Parochial and Plain Sermons as well as two novels. His poem, 'Dream of Gerontius,' was set to music by Sir Edward Elgar.

After 1833, Newman was a prominent member of the Oxford Movement, which emphasized the Church’s debt to the Church Fathers and challenged any tendency to consider truth as completely subjective.

Historical research made Newman suspect that the Roman Catholic Church was in closest continuity with the Church that Jesus established. In 1845, he was received into full communion as a Catholic. Two years later he was ordained a Catholic priest in Rome and joined the Congregation of the Oratory, founded three centuries earlier by Saint Philip Neri. Returning to England, Newman founded Oratory houses in Birmingham and London and for seven years served as rector of the Catholic University of Ireland.

Before Newman, Catholic theology tended to ignore history, preferring instead to draw deductions from first principles—much as plane geometry does. After Newman, the lived experience of believers was recognized as a key part of theological reflection.

Newman eventually wrote 40 books and 21,000 letters that survive. Most famous are his book-length Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine, Apologia Pro Vita Sua—his spiritual autobiography up to 1864—and Essay on the Grammar of Assent. He accepted Vatican I's teaching on papal infallibility while noting its limits, which many people who favored that definition were reluctant to do.

When Newman was named a cardinal in 1879, he took as his motto 'Cor ad cor loquitur'—'Heart speaks to heart.'

He was buried in Rednal 11 years later. After his grave was exhumed in 2008, a new tomb was prepared at the Oratory church in Birmingham.

Three years after Newman died, a Newman Club for Catholic students began at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. In time, his name was linked to ministry centers at many public and private colleges and universities in the United States.

In 2010, Pope Benedict XVI beatified Newman in London. Benedict noted Newman's emphasis on the vital place of revealed religion in civilized society, but also praised his pastoral zeal for the sick, the poor, the bereaved, and those in prison. Pope Francis canonized Newman in October 2019.

Source: Franciscan Media

[simshousewindsor]

KINGS CITY, San Myshuno (SNN) - - Queen Katherine I and Prince Rainier had an audience with Pope Francis XVI at the Vatisim on Thursday. The pope expressed his “deepest personal esteem” for the queen for bearing “the weight of such vast responsibilities with so much simplicity and dignity.”

Francis Benedict XVI, the Holy Pope, is Chief Pastor of the worldwide Cathlosim Church and Head of The State of King’s City in San Myshuno. It was the first time Queen Katherine met Pope Francis and she took with her on the plane home gifts for the royal children. Pope Francis also handed the queen a precious stone brooch with a cross on it.

His late Majesty King George I visited the pope during an informal visit the month before his passing.

Queen Katherine was invited for a formal visit and was greeted by Dean of the College of Cardinals, Abraham Criste, one of three Cardinal bishops.

Nathan Banks, Windenburg's ambassador to the Holy See, described the visit as a "reaffirmation" of the ties between the Holy See and the UK, noting that it was taking place in the centenary year of the formal re-establishment of diplomatic relations between the two.

However, the visit was not without its potential tensions. Ronald Jacobs, a papal expert at the University of Reading, said: "Thursday's meeting comes at a time when, on the surface, relations between the Cathlosim church and the Church of Windenburg are at an all-time high. But dig a little deeper and issues arise."

He singled out the C of W's ordination of female priests and push for female bishops. Another issue that some said could have set the two heads of state on a collision course is the status of the Manushkin Islands, the Windenburg territory in the Simmy Channel over which Windenburg and Mt Komorebi went to war in 1979.

Queen Katherine (wearing Princess Amelia's Fife Fringe tiara, Queen Lara-Leigh's 4-strand pearl necklace, the Order of the Garter, and the Royal Family Order of King George I) and the Prince consort (in the Order of the Garter) joined Cardinal Criste and the other two Cardinal bishops, Walter Tesmond and Luke Nicholas, for a photo op in front of the Vatisim.

Breaking from tradition, the Camerlengo, Benjamin Carmichael III was among the Cardinal bishops greeting the queen.

The Vatisim has a dress code - those visiting cannot wear low-cut or sleeveless dresses, miniskirts, shorts and hats. Black lace is customary when visiting the Pope and Queen Katherine stayed with tradition rewearing the classic “Till Death Do Us Part” dress.

On their website it states: 'The Vatisim is an independent state in which the Catholisim Church is based and imposes its dress rules throughout the city.

'The clothing required is modest and requires for respect of the sacredness of the institutions the coverage of certain areas of the body.'

Before a private audience, the queen gave the pope a hamper of what the Vatisim said was "jams and drinks" produced on lands owned by the royal family. One of the drinks was a bottle of whiskey from Windsor Vineyard.

As a pair, the queen and the pope are leaders to millions of sims around the world.

The pope did not attend His late Majesty's funeral and is not confirmed to attend Her Majesty's coronation in May.

While in San Myshuno, the Queen is also scheduled to meet Henry Myers, 4th Earl of Stafford. Myers is head of one of the five noble families in Windenburg, a fourth-generation homesteader and devoted father. Lord Henry controls the largest contiguous ranch in Windenburg - the Stafford Myers Ranch.

[bqstqnbruin]

France recap: The girls were amazing we had no issues, illnesses, or injuries. We got off the plane in Paris and went right to the Catacombs while everyone else at school was in first period, I walked down a street in Paris eating macarons and lived my best life, got absolutely soaked at the Eiffel Tower because we got caught in a torrential downpour, climbed more spiral staircases in the week than I ever have in my life, found out I suck at petanque, ran through the Louvre because the lady who worked there didn't know where Hammurabi's code was but I found it using a fucking 3DS, took a train to Avignon and saw the Papal Palace with a tour guide that was so funny, climbed to the top of a Roman Aqueduct, went to Nice and watched one of my girls get crushed by a wave trying to take a cute picture on the beach, climbed more stairs to see a waterfall, went to Monaco and had one of the Prince's guards wink at me (he was hot and I miss him thank you) and then spent 23 hours awake to get home and slept for 13 hours

[drzigs]

The war on children

When I was a child I was obsessed with ‘the’ war.  The war to end all wars.

My father was Polish.  In the war he had lost everything.  He was 17 when it all started. By the end, 5 long years later, he had been interned and escaped from a camp, he had family sent to the gulag, he had joined the army in exile.  He had seen more horror, experienced more fear, and lost so very very much. His father, his brother, cousins, his friends, his family home, his country, his youth, all gone.  What he had gained was a new fierce, fundamental understanding for peace.  

My dad spoke 8 languages fluently.  Fluently to the point where people thought him a native wherever he went.  He was native Frency, native Italian, native Spanish, native Czech, even like a native Russian, even like a native German. I think this gave him the greatest gift of empathy.  Of wanting good, and teaching me tolerance, forgiveness. During the war he became a special agent, a SOE operative. He was involved in the Polish Resistance, in broadcasting on the BBC World Service, and eventually in liberating some of the concentration camps.  The man I knew spoke little, if ever, about the war.  Yet the war was part of who I was.  The war and the homeland lost, as if inherited trauma, displacement itself my heritage.  

My father was brought up Catholic.  My uncle, a university friend of Pope John Paul II, sat on the Papal Council. Much of my childhood was spent growing up in the church.  A community, a way of life. Growing up around him, I found that my father however had two ‘faiths’, one the church, a professed ‘goodness’, and the other was his firm belief in Europe, an institution, a ‘belonging’ that brought with it peace and collaboration, the antithesis to nationalism and therefore, war.  He believed in peace like a religion. 

As an adult I now question my obsession with the war.  ‘THE’ war, as we called it.  As if there were no other.  However then, as an 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 year old I returned to this again and again.  I became an expert in the field. I read everything I could find.  Stories, novels in particular, the human descriptive of horror and survival.  The horrors of the holocaust.  The Warsaw Ghetto, the uprising, the brave, resourceful, inspiring characters of legend. The mechanics of a machine of evil, of murder.  I was a child.  In some senses this was simple good versus bad.  Yet, I wanted to understand more ; where could this horror come from, what was society's role in this, my fathers role, my uncle's role, the war office, the governments in exile. I asked relentlessly,  how?  How could these events happen. 

How could the world watch as millions were murdered. How?  How was it allowed? How did the ‘grown-ups’ not stop this?  How, when this happened in neighbourhoods, in communities. There were clerics, there were school teachers, there were toy makers.  A ghetto in the middle of a busy city.  How? 

My father would not talk about the war, so I would wait.  Late nights, when, after a few glasses of wine, he would sometimes, rarely, finally talk to me.  And I fed on these tidbits of information.  

And every time I would return to the same question.  How? How could people allow this to happen.  How could such evil exist in the world?  And he would tell me that it was because at the time people didn't really know, that they didn't know the full extent, at the time they didn’t have the news like we did, they didn’t have TV’s, they didn’t see the camps, the ovens.  And I partly believed him.  

The alternative truth, the reality I guess, is what we are living today, is what I have discovered as an adult.   

Then, as now, walls around enclaves, around ghettos, are built by people. Paperwork is signed by people. Ammunition is manufactured by people.  Uniforms are sewn by people. Planes are flown by people.  Armies are fed by people.  The software that guides the missiles that strike the hospital, the school, the refugee camp is made by people.  Bombs are dropped by people. People, the fabric of our communities. People like you and me.  It is us that is doing the killing.

This morning I watch @Wizardbisan, one of the many young journalists in Gaza, who has taken to her phone, and in her candid honesty, her dignity, her fear, her exhaustion as she bears witness yet again to the horrors beyond horrors happening now, this minute in Gaza.  This is not a book, a film.  This is not history.  This is NOW. This moment, as I type. And I feel her fear, her exhaustion.  I watch a video of a child crying, describing how the Israeli army pulled her grandad, her uncle and then her father out of a line as they crossed a checkpoint.  They took her clothes, her food, her support.  Her dad.  I watch a mother cradling her dead baby, limp, lifeless.  I see children, alone, covered in dust and blood and shaking in fear. The last doctor, alone in Al Shifa hospital begging for help as patients die around him. And more. And more.  Horrors upon horrors that defy understanding.  I will fall asleep thinking of these people.  I will wake up wondering if they survived the night. 

There is no saying that we ‘didn’t know’. 

I see that so many of my friends, my ‘internet contacts’ have liked Bisan’s post.  Business colleagues.  Yet - there is silence.  I also follow their feeds.  We are celebrating Christmas, sharing a joke.  And I wonder, are we not seeing this? This horror?  Is it like clickbait? Are we immune? Why, why are we so afraid to speak out?  And whilst we click ‘like’ on the mundane, the banal, children are being massacred.  Now genocide been televised.  It is in our phones.  It is happening in our very hands. 

Today I work in the Toy Industry.  And my professional life, like that of this industry, is built on the smiles, happiness, laughter and education of children.  Each and everyone of us in this industry has crafted a life around these little people, our future.  We educate, we entertain.  We create story lines and fantasies, teddy bears and Barbies, Lego construction sets and super hero action movies.  For children, all children, the world over.  Children of all languages and creeds, this is what we do it for.  Or is it?

If you watch these children of Gaza, the ones that are still alive, you will see that they no longer have their toys, any toys.  Not one child is holding a toy.  Occasional images will show toys crooked, covered in dust, half hidden amongst the rubble, the flashes of brightly coloured remnants of the Disney princess, the Spiderman blanket, the Ty bear, the toy pushchair.  Survival and fear is what the children hold now. 

As the United Nations have said - this war, this horrific, violent, despicable, carpet bombing destruction of Gaza is a war against children. 

So far 7000 children have been killed.  10s of thousands have life-changing injuries.  Hundreds have been operated without anaesthesia. Hundreds are orphans.  More than half a million are homeless. All are traumatised.  The greatest proportion of victims are under the age of 14.   

We cannot, we must not be silent.  

As an industry that champions children we have to stand up and be counted.  We need to call for a permanent ceasefire.  We need to find our voice.  Lest when our children ask us, ‘how could it happen?’ how?, we have to shrug - because we can no longer say that we didn’t know.   So we will have to say we didn’t care.  Or that it was too difficult.  Or, do we say, that we had to kill these children, these babies, you see they were hiding terrorists.  Or maybe we will say that they didn’t matter, they had the wrong colour skin, or worshipped the wrong god.  Is that what you will say?

Today I am my father’s age.  And my child asks me why? How?  How could it be happening?  And I, like my father, do not know what to say.  But I urge him to have a voice.  I want to protect him from the horrors, but I need him, fiercely, to learn to speak up, to speak out.  To believe in peace like it is the new religion.  For it is only by doing this that we can find our humanity.

I would urge you all to read the open letters from Medicins Sans Frontieres: https://www.msf.org/letter-gaza-un-security-council

And if you would be willing, to sign the open letter below: 

[authortobenamedlater]

@a2on1break this is for you because you sent me that ask last year asking about my long-abandoned Keeping Up With the Raptors stories and got me thinking about those characters I loved so much again. 

I’ve had this written for a little bit and in the spirit of trying to get over that dumb hockey game last week, I’m gonna post it.  I’m not sure if I’ll ever put this on AO3.

I’m also just slightly irked that Seattle got a hockey team before I could get this series any further along, LOL.

Before we get started: The Catholic/Protestant “argument” is some good-natured iron-sharpening-iron between friends. It’s not meant to be taken super seriously and I won’t entertain people getting mad about it or telling me how wrong I am.

--

“Ever think about what we’ll do when all this is over?”

Andor Ronningen raised an eyebrow at his defense partner.

“You must have thought about it,” Hank went on.

Andor looked past Hank to the clouds below. “Go back to Bergen, maybe.”

Hank put his Kindle down and faced Andor head on. “You went through all that trouble becoming an American citizen so you could go back to Norway?”

“You asked,” Andor harrumphed.

“You want to live where it’s winter six months out of the year? Nine feet of snow, always dark—”

“You’re from Colorado!”

“Yeah, and I don’t live there anymore.” 

“I never said I was going back for good,” Andor clarified. “Just for a little while. You could come visit, you know.”

“That’s a great idea,” Hank said wryly. “Put my wife and our six children on a 24-hour plane ride.” 

“Donna and Ashley are basically adults.” 

“Basically adults who still rely on me and Katie to pay for the very air they breathe.”

Andor rolled his eyes. “All right, what are you going to do when all this is over, you little ray of sunshine?”

Hank seemed to think. “Maybe I’ll go to law school after all.”

Andor snorted. “Really?”

“Yeah, why not? My LSAT scores are probably still good.”

“Oh, I’m sure,” Andor chuffed. “It’s only been…twenty years?”

“Nineteen,” Hank corrected pointedly.

“Yes, that one year makes such a difference.”

“Hey, you were gonna retire last year,” Hank said. “Now you’re about to play in another Cup Final. A year can make a lot of difference.”

Andor grunted. “Feeling every second of it.”

Hank sobered a little. “Me, too.”

“Gosh, Hank, we’re old.”

“We really are.”

“Did it hurt this much last year?” Andor asked.

“I don’t think I was this sore last year,” Hank answered.

“My knee still hurts from that fall in Minnesota last week.”

“You did go down pretty hard,” Hank mused.

“Don’t try to make me feel better about it. I did not go down that hard.” Andor paused. “How’s your shoulder?”

“Fine.”

“Are you lying?”

“Yup,” Hank deadpanned.

“Huh. If you were Catholic, you’d have to go to confession for that.”

“And that’s why I’m Protestant.”

“That’s the only reason?”

“You also still haven’t sold me on papal infallibility.”

“Are you really going there again?” Andor huffed.

“I’m just saying, I’m not sold.”

Andor chuckled and shook his head. “I’ll keep working on you.” He gave Hank an almost fond smile. “Maybe I’ll bring you back to the fold by next year.”

“Or maybe I’ll bring you over to the light.”

Andor glared playfully. “Don’t bet on it.”

“Well,” Hank picked up his Kindle. “A year can make a lot of difference.”

--

For anyone who read this far: Hank and Andor were 41 and 43, I think? I’d have to go back through the stories. But they are old by hockey standards and like to play up their grumpy old defensemen act.

That doesn’t seem as old now as it did when I started this series 12 years ago.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 3.21

537 – Siege of Rome: King Vitiges attempts to assault the northern and eastern city walls, but is repulsed at the Praenestine Gate, known as the Vivarium, by the defenders under the Byzantine generals Bessas and Peranius. 630 – Emperor Heraclius returns the True Cross, one of the holiest Christian relics, to Jerusalem. 717 – Battle of Vincy between Charles Martel and Ragenfrid. 1152 – Annulment of the marriage of King Louis VII of France and Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine. 1180 – Emperor Antoku accedes to the throne of Japan. 1556 – On the day of his execution in Oxford, former archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer deviates from the scripted sermon by renouncing the recantations he has made and adds, "And as for the pope, I refuse him, as Christ's enemy, and Antichrist with all his false doctrine." 1788 – A fire in New Orleans leaves most of the town in ruins. 1800 – With the church leadership driven out of Rome during an armed conflict, Pius VII is crowned Pope in Venice with a temporary papal tiara made of papier-mâché. 1801 – The Battle of Alexandria is fought between British and French forces near the ruins of Nicopolis near Alexandria in Egypt. 1804 – Code Napoléon is adopted as French civil law. 1814 – Napoleonic Wars: Austrian forces repel French troops in the Battle of Arcis-sur-Aube. 1821 – Greek War of Independence: Greek revolutionaries seize Kalavryta. 1844 – The Baháʼí calendar begins. This is the first day of the first year of the Baháʼí calendar. It is annually celebrated by members of the Baháʼí Faith as the Baháʼí New Year or Náw-Rúz. 1861 – Alexander Stephens gives the Cornerstone Speech. 1871 – Otto von Bismarck is appointed as the first Chancellor of the German Empire. 1871 – Journalist Henry Morton Stanley begins his trek to find the missionary and explorer David Livingstone. 1918 – World War I: The first phase of the German Spring Offensive, Operation Michael, begins. 1919 – The Hungarian Soviet Republic is established becoming the first Communist government to be formed in Europe after the October Revolution in Russia. 1921 – The New Economic Policy is implemented by the Bolshevik Party in response to the economic failure as a result of war communism. 1925 – The Butler Act prohibits the teaching of human evolution in Tennessee. 1925 – Syngman Rhee is removed from office after being impeached as the President of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea. 1928 – Charles Lindbergh is presented with the Medal of Honor for the first solo trans-Atlantic flight. 1935 – Shah of Iran Reza Shah Pahlavi formally asks the international community to call Persia by its native name, Iran. 1937 – Ponce massacre: Nineteen unarmed civilians in Ponce, Puerto Rico are gunned down by police in a terrorist attack ordered by the US-appointed Governor, Blanton C. Winship. 1943 – Wehrmacht officer Rudolf von Gersdorff plots to assassinate Adolf Hitler by using a suicide bomb, but the plan falls through; von Gersdorff is able to defuse the bomb in time and avoid suspicion. 1945 – World War II: British troops liberate Mandalay, Burma. 1945 – World War II: Operation Carthage: Royal Air Force planes bomb Gestapo headquarters in Copenhagen, Denmark. They also accidentally hit a school, killing 125 civilians. 1945 – World War II: Bulgaria and the Soviet Union successfully complete their defense of the north bank of the Drava River as the Battle of the Transdanubian Hills concludes. 1946 – The Los Angeles Rams sign Kenny Washington, making him the first African American player in professional American football since 1933. 1952 – Alan Freed presents the Moondog Coronation Ball, the first rock and roll concert, in Cleveland, Ohio. 1960 – Apartheid: Sharpeville massacre, South Africa: Police open fire on a group of black South African demonstrators, killing 69 and wounding 180. 1963 – Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary (in California) closes. 1965 – Ranger program: NASA launches Ranger 9, the last in a series of unmanned lunar space probes. 1965 – Martin Luther King Jr. leads 3,200 people on the start of the third and finally successful civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. 1968 – Battle of Karameh in Jordan between the Israel Defense Forces and the combined forces of the Jordanian Armed Forces and PLO. 1970 – The first Earth Day proclamation is issued by Joseph Alioto, Mayor of San Francisco. 1970 – San Diego Comic-Con, the largest pop and culture festival in the world, hosts its inaugural event. 1980 – Cold War: U.S. President Jimmy Carter announces a United States boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow to protest the Soviet–Afghan War. 1983 – The first cases of the 1983 West Bank fainting epidemic begin; Israelis and Palestinians accuse each other of poison gas, but the cause is later determined mostly to be psychosomatic. 1986 – Debi Thomas became the first African American to win the World Figure Skating Championships 1989 – Transbrasil Flight 801 crashes into a slum near São Paulo/Guarulhos International Airport, killing 25 people. 1990 – Namibia becomes independent after 75 years of South African rule. 1994 – The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change enters into force. 1999 – Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones become the first to circumnavigate the Earth in a hot air balloon. 2000 – Pope John Paul II makes his first ever pontifical visit to Israel. 2006 – The social media site Twitter is founded. 2019 – The 2019 Xiangshui chemical plant explosion occurs, killing at least 47 people and injuring 640 others. 2022 – China Eastern Airlines Flight 5735 crashes in Guangxi, China, killing 132 people.

[christianpureofficial]

Pope Francis at 88: Age-old wisdom, intergenerational dialogue at heart of evangelization

Pope Francis is presented with a birthday cake aboard the papal plane on the return from his trip to Corsica on Sunday, Dec. 15, 2024. / Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/CNA Vatican City, Dec 17, 2024 / 09:20 am (CNA). Pope Francis, who celebrates his 88th birthday today, has become one of the oldest-serving popes in the Catholic Church’s 2,000-year history. Having instituted the World Day of Grandparents…

[allthenewzworld]

Pope Francis on Friday described the choice US voters must make in the presidential election as one between the "lesser of two evils," deeming former President Donald Trump's anti-migrant policies and Vice President Kamala Harris' support of abortion rights as both being "against life."

"One must choose the lesser of two evils. Who is the lesser of two evils? That lady or that gentleman? I don't know," Francis said during a press conference on the papal plane, referring to Harris and Trump. "Everyone with a conscience should think on this and do it."

Read more at the link in our bio.

📸: Tiziana Fabi/AFP/Getty Images

#allthenews

[gonzalo-obes]

IMAGENES Y DATOS INTERESANTES DEL DIA 11 DE FEBRERO DE 2024

Día Internacional de la Mujer y la Niña en la Ciencia, Día Mundial de la Mujer Médica, Jornada Mundial del Enfermo, Día de los Servicios de Emergencia 112 o Día del 112, Año Internacional de los Camélidos.

Virgen de Lourdes y San Adolfo.

Tal día como hoy en el año 2011

En Egipto, 18 días de protestas del pueblo en las calles, logran que el presidente Hosni Mubarak, abandone el cargo que ocupa desde 1981. El vicepresidente del país, Omar Suleimán, anuncia que el "rais" deja el poder en manos del Ejército. Sus palabras desatan la euforia en las calles del país y, en la plaza de Tahrir (plaza de la Liberación) de El Cairo, símbolo de la revolución, donde centenares de miles de personas han mantenido el pulso con el Gobierno desde el 25 de enero pasado, la caída del hombre que ha dirigido durante tres décadas la nación más poblada del mundo árabe es recibida con muestras de desbordante alegría. (Hace 13 años)

1990

En Sudáfrica es liberado Nelson Mandela por el gobierno del recientemente electo presidente F.W. De Klerk, que ha tomado medidas para desmantelar el Apartheid, tras pasar 27 años en prisión. Mandela, miembro del Congreso Nacional Africano, siempre ha defendido la resistencia pacífica contra el Apartheid. En 1964 fue acusado de traición y sentenciado a cumplir cadena perpetua en la inhumana prisión de Robben Island. Durante todos estos años no fue posible doblegar su carácter y lideró a sus compañeros de presidio en un movimiento de desobediencia para solicitar mejoras en las condiciones carcelarias. Supone el comienzo del fin del Apartheid, política de segregación racial que seguirá vigente hasta 1994 caracterizada por una neta división entre la minoría blanca gobernante y la mayoría no blanca. En 1994 Mandela resultará elegido primer presidente negro de Sudáfrica. (Hace 34 años)

1979

El pueblo iraní levantado y apoyado por unidades del ejército toma la ciudad de Teherán. El gobierno títere del Sha Reza Pahlevi, encabezado por Chapur Bakhtiar se desmorona rápidamente ante la muchedumbre enardecida. La revolución de Jomeini va camino del triunfo y un régimen islamista autoritario acabará por ver la luz. (Hace 45 años)

1945

En el marco de la II Guerra Mundial, llega a su fin la Conferencia de Yalta, a orillas del Mar Negro soviético, reunión que han mantenido Josef Stalin, Winston Churchill y Franklin D. Roosevelt, como jefes de gobierno de la URSS, del Reino Unido y de Estados Unidos, respectivamente, para coordinar sus planes de guerra en un momento en el que las operaciones contra las potencias del Eje han entrado en una fase decisiva. Será la violación de algunos de estos acuerdos por parte de los soviéticos lo que llevará a la división de Europa, por lo que el cierre de esta conferencia suele considerarse como el comienzo de la Guerra Fría. (Hace 79 años)

1929

Benito Mussolini por Italia y Pietro Gasparri en representación del Vaticano firman el Tratado Laterano, reconociendo la soberanía papal sobre la Ciudad del Vaticano, en Roma. (Hace 95 años)

1873

El rey de España, Amadeo I de Saboya, abdica al trono y se refugia en la embajada Italiana, lo que abrirá paso a la Primera República y a un periodo caracterizado por la inestabilidad política en todo el país. El 29 de diciembre de 1874, con el pronunciamiento del general Martínez-Campos, se dará fin a la Primera República y comienzo a la Restauración borbónica en España por la que la Casa de Borbón recuperará el trono por medio de Alfonso XII en 1874. (Hace 151 años)

[yhwhrulz]

Today's selected anniversaries: 5th February 2024

1913:

Claudio Monteverdi's last opera, L'incoronazione di Poppea, was performed theatrically for the first time in more than 250 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27incoronazione_di_Poppea

1958:

After a mid-air collision with a fighter plane during a practice exercise off Tybee Island, Georgia, a U.S. Air Force bomber jettisoned a Mark 15 nuclear bomb, which was presumed lost. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1958_Tybee_Island_mid-air_collision

1985:

The mayors of Carthage and Rome signed a symbolic peace treaty to officially end the Third Punic War, 2,134 years after it began. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Punic_War

2019:

Pope Francis became the first pope to celebrate a papal Mass in the Arabian Peninsula. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Francis