#daily reminder that these characters are 400+ years old

[laismoura-art]

Lmao! All part of Cole's plan!👀

Cole: Lmao! You two are short!

Hanzo & Bi-Han: *Stop arguing immediately and glare at Cole*

Bi-Han, a 400+ years old man: Uh, why is this infant making fun of us??

Hanzo, feeling betrayed by his own grand-grand-grandchild: Cole, how dare you??

Bi-Han: Have you got no respect for your elders??

Hanzo: I thought my bloodline was raised better than that!

Bi-Han, fully on Hanzo’s side now: You can ground his ass, you know? Ground his ass! Ground his ass! Ground his ass!

Hanzo: You know what? I'm grounding your ass!

Bi-Han: Yeah! You show him, Hasashi!

Hanzo & Bi-Han: *Fist bump while still glaring angrily at Cole*

Cole, grounded sitting on a corner: Well... at least they stopped fighting each other.

Kuai: Told you it would work. Now Harumi will unground you, and we'll get you some ice cream as compensation for your sacrifice.

Cole: Thanks, Gramps!

Also, Harumi is definitely the scariest of the bunch!

I am brainstorming for a MK 2021 Movie AU where she returns as a specter with Hanzo (in which Bi-Han only killed her, Satoshi was hidden with his baby sister and they were both rescued by Raiden)

And if you think Bi-Han was shocked by Hanzo's return, he was TERRIFIED by Harumi's! Cause the woman did NOT go down without a fight and if he was scary then, now she's on a whole new level!

And though he never managed to hurt her kids, he still threatened, and for a mother, hoho, that's more than enough!💀

Huge thanks to the Mortal Kombat 2021 movie for making Short King Hanzo canon!😌💅🏾✨️

You BET this universe's Bi-Han has LOADS of fun with his Hanzo, and it's up to Hanzo's grandkid to come to his defence!😂

Please, Cole, save your short grandpa, he'll commit murder✊️😔

And to all my Andrew Koji Kuai Liang believers:

TALL KING KUAI!

You bet he would make fun of Bi-Han for this one (1) centimetre, lol!

Bi-Han: Of course I'm in charge, I'm older!

Kuai: But I'm taller.

Bi-Han: FOR ONE CENTIMETRE!

Kuai: What, gonna cry, shortie?

Bi-Han, already crying: I hate you...

Also, also, also cause they are too important to let slide:

Look at my perfect staircase trouple!! 🩷💛💙

And in line to make a pan flag, they are MEANT👏🏾 TO👏🏾 BE!👏🏾

[kechiwrites]

katsuki, izuku, and shouto as types of doting dads

🌿 gender neutral!reader

🌿 sfw drabbles, lots of domestic fluff under the cut, 

🌿  warning: bakugo swearing, of course

🌿 w.c: 1.2k (approx. 400 each) 

🌿 a/n: thank u to my angel @mindninjax​ for naming katsu’s tiktok. sorry about the formatting, tumblr hates me.

katsuki

Bakugo’s kids are not spoiled, fuck you for even insinuating it.

Bakugo’s kids get what they need.

And what they need is a four tier bento box, every school day.

Insulated, of course, because “they aren’t fucking animals.”

And what starts as Bakugo just being a very attentive father, grows into you recording him coming home from his early morning run and grumbling while he puts on the frilly, lemon yellow apron your kids got him for Christmas two years ago, which grows into him carefully arranging a camera setup over your kitchen countertops, “because you’re the shittiest director alive, dumbass.” Which leads to the tiktok account dine-amight, where Bakugo uploads his intermediate-level character bentos, full to bursting with perfectly seasoned rice balls shaped like All Might and Hello Kitty, star and moon shaped fruits and veggies and occasionally, when your kids beg for them, Bakugo’s famous rainbow mini pancakes.

And of course a pro-hero with a reputation like Bakugo doing anything domestic is worth coverage and acclaim, blowing the account’s followers into the hundreds of thousands in a week.

In fact, people are shocked that Bakugo can even find the time. But he’d do anything for your kids, do anything to see them bring home empty bentos, bragging about all the kids drooling over their lunches that day. Anything to watch their missing tooth smiles when he asks how they were.

And if that means a couple of extra grocery trips at the end of the week and really early morning runs and gentle kisses on your forehead while you mutter and shift in your sleep before he starts the rice cooker, then so be it.

“Katsuki, they are not going to eat caviar. They do not need caviar.” Honestly, you were less surprised he was dropping it in the cart and more surprised your local supermarket even carried it in the first place. 

“They’ll eat whatever the fuck I give them.” He bites, pushing the cart just shy of too fast through the aisle, head swivelling back and forth for god knows what else. An elderly woman casts your husband a dirty look as he just barely swings the metal buggy to avoid her, to which Katsuki helpfully spits “Keep it movin’, hag!” 

“They’re 10!” 

“Doesn’t mean they need to choke down dry ass chicken nuggets and grape juice all day.”

izuku

Birthday party dad, the absolute worst party dad. Thousands of dollars on his kids’ birthday parties. Princess parties, pirate parties, any theme your kids can gurgle about liking and Deku has pulled out his tablet and is putting a pinterest board together before you can remind him that the twins’ birthday was two months ago. 

“We can get an early start on next year. What’ll you think it’ll cost to turn the pool into an ice rink?”

          “My sanity.”

        “Don’t be dramatic.”

Gets almost ridiculously bitter when the family across the street throws an All Might themed party when he knows, he fucking knows, they overheard him talking about throwing one for the boys months ago, But he is not changing his plan. Naw naw naw, your kids are gonna get their All Might party, they’re getting the All Might Party. Every single attendee is getting a vintage, tin All Might lunchbox stuffed to bursting with All Might merch; toys, branded candy only released in Sweden, keychains, those little retro bubble charms, anything he can cram in there. The yellow, red and blue bouncy castle he rented rivals the size of your house. And then, because there is not a soul on the planet pettier than your husband, he forces every pro hero he’s ever known to get in costume and take photos with the kids. He makes the one with the twins your yearly christmas card, then hand delivers it to the family across the street.

In October.

You bake apology pies for weeks.

“You know this is ridiculous right? Deku, she’s 2” you stress the number, pinching the bridge of your nose. “She isn't going to remember any of this.”

“I'm not listening, I didn't hear that, I am busy putting little princesses on cupcakes, a task you said you would help me with.” He’s grinning when he turns to you, and when you hold out your hand, he places a piping bag full of baby pink frosting in your open palm. 

Together you hunch over the kitchen island to ice and decorate twenty-four strawberry vanilla cupcakes, nudging and snickering at each other’s lopsided princess figures until the two of you are smearing icing on skin and tossing edible glitter into hair.

shouto

You know those “girl dads”? That’s Shouto. He takes her everywhere, takes pictures of everything that little girl does. School plays, holidays, playdates, you name it and there’s a dedicated, timestamped album that Shouto is begging to show every visitor, mailman and coworker. 

He prints them out, and maintains an instagram account filled with his favourite daddy-daughter moments, updated. daily.

Nevermind that he hasn’t used his own personal account in 9 years.

His favourite thing is buying and wearing matching outfits, carrying her in one arm. “Yes, I know she can walk, she’s very talented, she can do anything. She just likes to be as tall as daddy is.”

Whenever he picks her up from school, your husband slides her sweet little coat on and gently secures her into her car seat, right where he can see her when he looks in the rearview mirror. Then, Shouto drives your daughter wherever she wants to go. 

Wherever.

If it’s the zoo, they’re going, and they’re coming back with a gigantic, stuffed red panda to add to her own (not so little) plushie zoo at home. If it’s Starbucks, she comes toddling through the front door holding a VENTI, frozen hot chocolate frappuccino (no coffee, of course) and a brownie. Shouto asks them to make it special, he would never let her handle anything too hot.

“Shouto, stop. You’re gonna rot her teeth, she can’t even finish that.” Which is totally true, the cup’s as big as your daughter’s head. Not that she seems to mind, the way she hefts it up for you to see from the entryway while Shouto undoes her glittery blue shoelaces.

“I’ll finish the rest.” He shrugs, picking her up and plopping her down on the living room couch next to you, pressing a light kiss to the top of your head before shuffling off to hang up their identical winter coats.

He doesn’t even like chocolate.

“Why would she need a iPad?” You grab Shouto by his shoulders and make him look at you. 

“For…school.” His voice is quiet and subdued and you almost feel bad...before you remember your husband is clutching an $800 tablet he intends to give your 6 year old kid to his chest in the middle of an electronics store.

“Baby...she’s in elementary school…They aren’t even using calculators yet.” You try to pry the package out of his grip, steadfastly ignoring the gentle downturn of Shouto’s mouth at the development. 

“She’s very advanced for her age.” The frown is a full on pout by now and you shut it down as quick as you can. 

“No. Uh uh. Put that bottom lip back in. Then put the tablet back.”

It’s wrapped in shiny purple paper by December 19th.

🌿 join my taglist here 🌿

[underthesunofpialat]

#2 First step : L’Enfance nue

In 1968, Maurice Pialat wanted to make a documentary about the children of the Assistance Publique. The project was finally transformed into a feature film that shows the daily life of François, a young, unruly 13-year-old boy abandoned by his family and placed in foster care. The film, in its way of showing the accidental course of a boy, is not without reminding Truffaut's The 400 Blows, which participates in the production of the project.

But if the two films can be compared in their thematic, there is however a big difference between them in the staging. Maurice Pialat's film has indeed a very documentary aspect. The director shoots in the North of France to film people that he interviews and plays in front of his camera. Thus, L'Enfance nue is almost exclusively interpreted by amateur actors. All this gives a certain charm and a great impression of realism to Pialat's film, which lays the foundations of his future filmography. The character of François is as disturbing as it is touching and embodies all the complexity of this very special phase of childhood.

It is also this project that highlights the particular way that Maurice Pialat will maintain throughout his career with his actors. Very demanding, the director does not hesitate to be violent with Michel Tarrazon, the young boy playing the character of François. This requirement, Pialat will keep it throughout his career.

[dragonfly0808]

holy shit, I’m not from the USA and like, I know that things are getting all kinds of fucked up over there but this is a whole other level (like I’m actually planning on reading a bunch of books that they’re trying to/have already banned just as a big fuck you, How to Kill a Mockingbird is the first since I have my mom’s copy but have never read it)

I cannot believe the amount of insanity that is going on over there when it comes to banning and censorship its just insane and I feel so bad that this is happening

Like Mexico is supposedly ‘less progressive/less’ in the eyes of a lot of USA people especially older folks but I cannot imagine smth like this happening here, like i cannot imagine worrying about going to school on a daily basis and now that they’re banning books it’s giving very concerning vibes, reminds me of a certain horrible group of people that burned a lot of books (a lot of which were from queer authors/queer stories) and we lost so much history and so many stories to censorship already that I just… as someone who first read about a queer couple when I was fucking 7 years old I can’t understand how people think that this shit is protecting people. At seven I was like, ‘oh, two guys are kissing. Neat…. Oh, this is pretty cute!’ And that was fucking it

Like- I just can’t even put myself in their minds even for a split second I just cannot understand banning books like this with not giving a single fuck about children that need to form their own opinions and that books are so important in helping kids look at the world from different points of view.

I remember being 6 reading The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan and not understanding why one of the main characters, Carter Kane spoke about having to be cautious of cops from the moment he lost his baby fat and being like… but why? cause I didn’t understand racism and bias and that helped me gain a new perspective at just 6 years old I may not have fully understood it but over the years tidbits of reading so many books from people that are nothing like me has helped me with the way I see the world and I can’t just- I hate this. I hate this so fucking much.

I can’t imagine not getting to read books from queer authors and about queer/black stories not just because of many beautiful love stories that would be taken away but just, stories in general that are so precious even if they sometimes deal with heavy subjects, heavy subjects are a part of life and a part of the world and I do not understand wanting to limit the view someone has of the world in this way

I feel like I’m witnessing the start of a fucking dystopian society. I realize that might sound like an exageration but, I think most people who have been readers from a young age can agree that this is just so insane, like… banning books for having a few queer characters because ‘OH THE CHILDREN’ no. Fuck you. You don’t and have never cared about the children.

I know I rarely get personal or ‘political’ on my blog but this is smth that is just outrageous and so wrong to me and truly just breaks my heart. I’m in my room, surrounded by books. I have 2 bookshelves (3 technically) about 400 books in my room not counting hundreds of books that I have given away or donated or sold to make room and to think that at least 50 of these would probably be banned in the USA is just so gutwrenching to me.

And then to know that they would likely target sites like AO3, specifically because they often involve many queer stories/couples is just… ugh…

I don’t know if this is fully true but the idea that sites could be sued for HAVING QUEER CONTENT is just fucking insane

I’ve been reading a few classics lately. And to think that even those might not be safe from these idiotic acts is just… wow.

We have so much to learn from stories and books. Or even if you just read for fun there is still so much there. Stories help people, stories have helped me my whole life. This should be criminal

I am so tired…

We all know about the DDOS attacks on AO3 as it is still down. So it is very important we talk about the KOSA(Kids Online Safety Act) that is going to hit the floor soon. Because if that act goes through this could very much be the new reality of not only AO3 but online fandom spaces within the next year. The point of this act is to limit queer media and to eliminate online queer spaces.

Let me stress, the politicians are lying to you. Democrats and Republicans are lobbying for this. It is not pro trans rights and it is not pro lgbtq rights. This is very reminiscent of the Restrict Act! Politicians can SUE websites for having QEEER CONTENT. This act will not protect kids, it will further separate and marginalize the queer community!

If this bill goes through AO3, Wattpad, TikTok, Tumblr, and Twitter will be limited and fanfiction websites could be wiped out all together. If you are apart of fandom spaces pay attention and ACT! Call and email your senators! AND SIGN THE BELOW PETITIONS!

Reblog this! Send the links to people who aren’t on Tumblr! If you care about fandom, fandom spaces, your ships, your blorbos, fanfiction writers’ works, freedom to create, etc. Spread this!

If you aren’t American you can still sign/send some of these!

[julaibib]

(This is the question about telling a story with marriage as topic) You can tell me any story, as long marriage/love is the topic. I can’t many of them in Islam, so that’s why I wanted you to maybe tell some. It can be between anyone! A prophet and their wife, a sahaba and theirs or someone else from Islam. Maybe an odd thing to ask someone to do, but I think people should learn more about marriage and relationships from the best of us, instead of media and celebrities.

Fatima was a woman of eighteen and full of energy and passion with a personality that matched her father more than anyone else. This did not go unnoticed and many men started to come forward to ask her hand in marriage. First came Abu Bakr, and he was kindly refused by the Prophet ﷺ. Then came Umar, who was also kindly refused by the Prophet ﷺ. Umar went to Ali and suggested that he ask for Fatima’s (RA) hand. Ali was very much in love with her. However, Ali did not think that the Prophet ﷺ would accept his proposal, as he was very poor, especially when he saw that the proposals of two Companions were rejected. Umar reminded him of his family relationship with the Prophet ﷺ and his position in Islam and Ali became convinced that he might have a shot.All Ali’s confidence melted away though when he finally got to the Prophet’s ﷺ house. He came inside, sat down and said nothing. “What is the matter, son of Abu Talib?” said the Prophet ﷺ. Ali was still too nervous to speak. The Prophet ﷺ asked again, “What is your mind, son of Abu Talib?” Again Ali said nothing. “You have come to ask for Fatima’s (RA) had in marriage, am I right?” Ali nodded. The Prophet ﷺ broke into a great smile and went and asked Fatima her opinion. When she approved, he told Ali that they accept his proposal. He then asked him if he had any dowry for her. Ali replied that he did not. “What about your shield?” asked the Prophet ﷺ? “It is worth barely more than 400 Dirhams,” said Ali. “I accept it as a dowry,” replied the Prophet ﷺ.And so Ali sold his shield for 400 Dirhams and with the dowry the Prophet ﷺtold Bilal to buy some perfume for Fatima (RA) and he told Um Salama to buy her some new dresses. On the day of their wedding, their zaffa included all the Companians- Anas Ibn Malik, Abu Bakr, Umar, Talhah, Zubair and other Ansar and migrant friends. The food was dates that were offered to the guests. The wedding zaffa took them from Madinah to the outskirts of the city where Ali had found a home, as he couldn’t afford a place in the city.

Their house was a humble small room. It had a bed, a pillow filled with date leaves, a plate, a glass, a leather water bag, and a grinding stone for grinding flour. On their wedding night, the Prophet ﷺ told Ali and Fatima to wait for him in their new house. After Isha prayer, the Prophet ﷺ went to their house and asked for some water, which he used to make wudu, supplication, and said, “ Oh Allah bless them and bless their offspring.” He addressed Ali as his brother and asked him to place his hand on Fatima’s (RA) head and repeat some duaas. He then placed Ali’s hand on Fatima’s hand and advised them how to honor each other as husband and wife. “Ali do not get angry, and if you do, sit down. Remember Allah’s power over His servants and His tolerance of their sins. If you are advised to fear Allah, abandon your anger and go back to your deliberateness.” After he had given them all the advice he was walking out the door when he turned and said to them that they should pray two rakkahs.So began the married life of Ali and Fatima (RA).

Fatima (RA) and Ali were very devoted to Islam and integrated Islamic principles in their daily lives. One day, they were breaking their fast, when there was a knock on the door. Ali asked who it was and the person replied “a poor, hungry man”. Ali and Fatima (RA) gave him all of their food and broke their fast with only bread and water. The next day, they were breaking their fast when there was another knock on the door. This time it was “an orphan who is homeless and starving.” Again Ali and Fatima (RA) gave him all their food and broke their fast with bread and water. On the third day, at the knock on the door there was “a captive.” Once again Ali and Fatima (RA) at only bread and water as they gave all their food to the man. It was said that these three people were all angel Jibreel who was sent to test the patience of Ali and Fatima (RA). It was also said that Jibreel told Prophet Mohammed ﷺ about this and informed him that Ali and Fatima (RA) will have a carriage of silver in Paradise. Some scholars believe that it was this incident that caused the revelation of this verse:{And they give food, in spite of their love for it [or the love of Him] to the needy, the orphan, and the captive [saying], ‘We feed you seeking Allah’s countenance only. We wish for no reward or thanks from you.} –Holy Quran, 76: 8-9

The story of Umm Sulaym and Abu Talhah

Among the great Muslim women who are known for their strength of character, lofty aspirations and far-sightedness in their choice of a husband is Umm Sulaym bint Milhan, who was one of the first Ansar women to embrace Islam.

She was married to Malik ibn Nadar, and bore him a son, Anas. When she embraced Islam, her husband Malik was angry with her, and left her, but she persisted in her Islam. Shortly afterwards, she heard the news of his death, and she was still in the flower of her youth. She bore it all with the hope of reward, for the sake of Allah (SWT), and devoted herself to taking care of her ten-year-old son Anas. She took him to the Prophet (PBUH), so that he could serve him (and learn from him).

One of the best young men of Madinah, one of the best-looking, richest and strongest, came to seek her hand in marriage. This was Abu Talhah – before he became Muslim. Many of the young women of Yathrib liked him because of his wealth, strength and youthful good looks, and he thought that Umm Sulaym would joyfully rush to accept his offer. But to his astonishment, she told him, “O Abu Talhah, do you not know that your god whom you worship is just a tree that grew in the ground and was carved into shape by the slave of Banu so-and-so.” He said, “Of course.” She said, “Do you not feel ashamed to prostrate yourself to a piece of wood that grew in the ground and was carved by the slave of Banu so-and-so?” Abu Talhah was stubborn, and hinted to her of an expensive dowry and luxurious lifestyle, but she persisted in her point of view, and told him frankly: “O Abu Talhah, a man like you could not be turned away, but you are a disbelieving man, and I am a Muslim woman. It is not permitted for me to marry you, but if you were to embrace Islam, that would be my dowry (mahr), and I would ask you for nothing more.” [Reported by al-Nisa’i with a sahih isnad, 6/114, Kitab al-nikah, bab al-tazwij ‘ala’l-Islam.]

He returned the following day to try to tempt her with a larger dowry and more generous gift, but she stood firm, and her persistance and maturity only enhanced her beauty in his eyes. She said to him, “O Abu Talhah, do you not know that your god whom you worship was carved by the carpenter slave of so-and-so? If you were to set it alight, it would burn.” Her words came as a shock to Abu Talhah, and he asked himself, Does the Lord burn? Then he uttered the words: “Ashhadu an la ilaha ill-Allah wa ashhadu anna Muhammadan rasul-Allah.”

Then Umm Sulaym said to her son Anas, with joy flooding her entire being, “O Anas, marry me to Abu Talhah.” So Anas brought witnesses and the marriage was solemnized.

Abu Talhah was so happy that he was determined to put all his wealth at Umm Sulaym’s disposal, but hers was the attitude of the selfless, proud, sincere believing woman. She told him, “O Abu Talhah, I married you for the sake of Allah (SWT), and I will not take any other dowry.” She knew that when Abu Talhah embraced Islam, she did not only win herself a worthy husband, but she also earned a reward from Allah (SWT) that was better than owning red camels (the most highly-prized kind) in this world, as she had heard the Prophet (PBUH) say:“If Allah (SWT) were to guide one person to Islam through you, it is better for you than owning red camels.”[Fath al-Bari, 7/476, Kitab al-maghazi, bab ghazwat Khaybar.]

Such great Muslim women are examples worthy of emulation, from whom Muslim women may learn purity of faith, strength of character, soundness of belief and wisdom in choosing a husband.

Source Chapter 4: Ideal Muslimah Book

[fyrapartnersearch]

~ will you let me deceive you ~ (fandom cravings search)

greetings be careful who you trust, the devil was once an angel. ~ lowercase is purely for aesthetic purposes

~ feel free to call me deviation, dev, d, or lexi

~ i am a 22 year old female, meaning that i'd prefer to rp with people 18+ not only to be closer in age to me but also because my rps can venture into dark topics

~ central standard time

~ you can expect an average of four responses a week although i strive to daily respond, if possible.

~ my replies range from 400 - 4000 words, and i try to mirror my partner

~ third person, present tense although i will rp with people who write past tense (to each his own)

~ doubling is required for all fandom roleplays to keep everything fair. please do not contact me, asking if i can just play who you would like.

~ sucker for ooc chat although it is not required what I want in a partner (yes, we like to break the rules, but these aren't meant to be broken) it is not a shame to be deceived; but it is to stay in the deception 1| activity is fairly important to me because if i go two-three weeks without a response, i will likely lose interest which I don’t want to do! i would prefer if my partners could get me, at least, two responses a week.

2| because i am literate, i am looking for partners of the same! i would prefer, at least, two hearty paragraphs per response, although i am more than happy to receive more. would you like to basically create a book with me? i'm totally down!

3| please help me build our universe, and our story. i don’t want to do it all by myself. i want to make sure that we both enjoy it.

4| please don’t godmod my characters, and no mary sues or anything like that! nobody is perfect or without weakness. we love originality!

5| please be able to write in third person because first person makes it a bit weird for me, and way more personal than i'd like to go. i write in present tense myself although i am more than welcoming to those who write past tense.

6| i am ghost friendly, just please let me know if you decide to drop the rp, if you can, so i don’t find myself waiting for a response that will never come.

7| please let me know if you will be unable to respond for a week or longer, just so that I am aware and don’t think you have dropped the rp.

8| this isn’t a rule, but a preference. i love to get to know my rp partners, so ooc chatter is always welcome!

9| please have a good grasp on grammar and spelling. no text talk.

10| be willing to double if you decide to do canon x oc just so that it makes it fair to everyone.

11| please do NOT (see the caps) just send me a message, asking whether or not I’m still looking, or giving a measly sentence about yourself. i would prefer if you would tell me about your writing style, what you want to write with me, etc. give me something to go off of! let me see who you are!

12| i will rp smut, but it needs to be apart of the story and not overtaking it 

fandoms belief is the deception you play upon yourself now, let's move on to the fun part, and what i'm sure you guys are waiting on... the fandoms! because of all of the television i watch (is that a bad thing...?) i have fandoms all over the place that i'd love to rp! unless it is crossed out then i am still looking to do it, so feel free to contact me about it! i will have the fandoms divided up and under each, i will include characters i'm willing to play, and who i'd like to play against. again, just a reminder that doubling is mandatory although it doesn't have to stop there. i'm down to double/triple/quadruple, whatever you want. i also am down for au's and using the universe but using ours ocs. just shoot me ideas of what you want.  tv shows we often shed tears that deceive ourselves after deceiving others 1| arrow i'm currently in season five of this television show; meaning that i am not caught up although it does not mean that i won't rp it, just no spoilers, please! (characters i'm willing to play: anyone) (characters i'm looking for: oliver)

2| flash i'm currently in season three of this television show; meaning that i am not caught up although it does not mean that i won't rp it, just no spoilers, please! (characters i'm willing to play: anyone) (characters i'm looking for: barry)

3| vampire diaries i'm currently in season five of this television show; meaning that i am not caught up although it does not mean that i won't rp it, just no spoilers, please! (characters i'm willing to play: anyone except enzo, kai, vicki, april, kol) (characters i'm looking for: kol, damon, elijah, klaus)

4| glee i'm completely caught up with this show! (characters i'm willing to play: anyone) (characters i'm looking for: noah (puck), Jesse, brody, jake, ryder)

5| game of thrones i'm currently in season six of this television show; meaning that i am not caught up although it does not mean that i won't rp it, just no spoilers, please! (characters i'm willing to play: anyone except gregor, eddard, sandor, oberyn, brienne, melisandre, jorah,) (characters i'm looking for: gendry, ramsey, joffrey, khal drogo, jaime)

6| pretty little liars i'm currently in season three of this television show; meaning that i am not caught up although it does not mean that i won't rp it, just no spoilers, please! (characters i'm willing to play: anyone) (characters i'm looking for: wren, alex, ezra)

7| outlander i'm currently in season two of this television show; meaning that i am not caught up although it does not mean that i won't rp it, just no spoilers, please! (characters i'm willing to play: anyone) (characters i'm looking for: jamie)

8| 13 reasons why i'm currently in season two of this television show; meaning that i am not caught up although it does not mean that i won't rp it, just no spoilers, please! (characters i'm willing to play: anyone except hannah baker, tony, sheri, skye) (characters i'm looking for: bryce, zach, tyler)

9| elite i'm currently caught up with this television show (characters i'm willing to play: anyone except valerio, fernando, christian, marina, omar) (characters i'm looking for: polo, ander, guzman)

10| shadowhunters  i'm currently caught up with this show and have read the books! (characters i'm willing to play: anyone except lucian, jonathan) (characters i'm looking for: jace, magnus, sebastian) 

11| the fosters i'm currently in season two of this television show; meaning that i am not caught up although it does not mean that i won't rp it, just no spoilers, please! (characters i'm willing to play: anyone) (characters i'm looking for: brandon) movies it is more tolerable to be refused than deceived  1| mcu (characters i'm willing to play: anyone except strange, peter parker, peter quill, thanos, ant man)

(characters i'm looking for: tony stark, thor, loki, steve rodgers, clint barton, bruce banner) 2| after (characters i'm willing to play: anyone) (characters i'm looking for: hardin, jace)

3| twilight (characters i'm willing to play: anyone except emmett, james, sam) (characters i'm looking for: seth, embry, paul)

4| matched (not a movie, technically, but it is in my heart) (characters i'm willing to play: ky, xander) (characters i'm looking for: ky, xander)

5| divergent (only the first one) (characters i'm willing to play: al) (characters i'm looking for: four, eric, peter)

6| the host (characters i'm willing to play: jared, ian) (characters i'm looking for: jared, ian)

7| disney (special plot, shh, it's a secret. message me if you're interested) asian dramas it is amazing how complete the delusion that beauty is goodness 1| crash landing on you (characters i'm willing to play: anyone) (characters i'm looking for: junghyuk, seung-joon, kwang-beom)

2| boys over flowers (characters i'm willing to play: anyone) (characters i'm looking for: jun-pyo)

3| i need romance 1/2/3 (characters i'm willing to play: anyone) (characters i'm looking for: sung-hyun, seok-hyun, joo wan)

4| heirs/inheritors (characters i'm willing to play: anyone) (characters i'm looking for: kim tan, choi young-do)

5| good morning call (characters i'm willing to play: anyone) (characters i'm looking for: hisashi uehara, daichi shinozaki) anime time will inevitably uncover dishonesty and lies; history has no place for them 1| devil’s line (characters i'm willing to play: anyone) (characters i'm looking for: anzai)

2| vampire knight (characters i'm willing to play: anyone) (characters i'm looking for: zero, kaname)

3| amnesia (characters i'm willing to play: anyone) (characters i'm looking for: toma, shin, kent, ikki)

4| dragon ball z (characters i'm willing to play: goten, gohan, krillin, android 17, yamcha) (characters i'm looking for: trunks, vegeta)

5| kuzu no honkai (scum's wish) (characters i'm willing to play: anyone) (characters i'm looking for: mugi) cartoons  life is the art of being well deceived; and in order that the deception may succeed it must be habitual and uninterrupted 1| teen titans (characters i'm willing to play: anyone) (characters i'm looking for: robin)

2| young justice  (characters i'm willing to play: anyone) (characters i'm looking for: superboy)

3| adventure time (characters i'm willing to play: anyone except ice king, lsp) (characters i'm looking for: marshal lee)

4| avatar: the last airbender/legend of korra  (characters i'm willing to play: anyone except toph) (characters i'm looking for: zuko, bolin, mako, iroh (younger)) last words deception may give us what we want for the present, but it will always take it away, in the end thank you for reading through to the end of my thread, and i do hope that you found something you liked. just a reminder that all fandoms can be changed to use ocs or au's, i'm very open to those kinds of things! in addition, if you would like to contact me about a fandom, please send a message as opposed to posting on this thread (so i can keep it clean). i am only looking for a few partners, but i'd love to hear from as many of you as possible! thank you lovelies!

contact me 

feel free to email me (inthenameofjustice15@gmail.com) to talk about rping with me! 

[thesevenseraphs]

Bungie Weekly Update - 8/9/18

This week at Bungie, we demonstrated the evolution of combat in the second year of Destiny 2.

During an action-packed livestream, we showed off the changes that all players can expect, including our new weapon slot system, random rolls, more meaningful weapon mods, and a decreased time to kill in the Crucible (crispy three taps and spicy Devils!). All Destiny 2 players can experience a preview of our sandbox updates on August 28.

One topic that we’ve seen a lot of questions about is how we’ll migrate from old weapon mods to new weapon mods. Starting on August 28, your current mods will be deprecated, and your inventory will tell you that you can safely discard them for materials and parts. On September 4, the Gunsmith’s inventory will be dedicated to new Forsaken mods.

Between now and the preload on August 28, use your Year 1 mods to lock in the elemental damage type you want for your Year 1 weapons. They will retain that damage type after the mod deprecation. On August 28, the old mod slot will go away, and you will no longer be able to insert any mods into Year 1 gear or change the elemental damage type. Some weapons will be moving to the Kinetic Slot and will not retain elemental damage regardless of what mod you had applied. The IKELOS Sniper Rifle and Shotgun will be locked to Solar. Here are the Legendary weapons that will be moving to Kinetic:

Baligant

Shepherd’s Watch

Hawthorne’s Field-Forged Shotgun

Alone as a God

Perfect Paradox

The Frigid Jackal

Silicon Neuroma

There is plenty that’s about to change. Right now is a good time for us to set your expectations about a lot of it. This is a big one. Let’s dig in.

Wide Awake and Dreaming

Far away from the Crucible, you’ll find the first dedicated endgame destination we’ve created, home to our largest endgame experience ever.

You’ll discover the Dreaming City in Destiny 2: Forsaken.

How to Become Legend in Year 2

Weapon tuning and systems aren’t the only things that are changing in

Forsaken. When your next journey begins, you’ll also discover new ways to earn rewards and become more powerful. The Investment Team can give you a sense for what’s coming.

Investment Team: Here are our high-level goals for progression and economy in Season 4:

We want to bring back the days when you are impressed when you see someone at max Power in the Tower.

The experience of leveling and then powering up should be meaningful.

Players should have a sense of discovery when earning rewards from different activities.

When players accomplish something difficult, the rewards should be special or unique.

Not all of the sources of Power in a week should be apparent on the Director.

Acquisition of Power

In Year 1, an activity such as the raid would have an absolute range of Power that it could generate. Rewards would grant only a small difference in Power level, even if you were overcoming the challenge while under-leveled. In Forsaken, we are scaling the Power production of all content by the difficulty of that content. If you manage to beat the raid while 40 Power under the recommended level, you should expect to receive more potent rewards. When players earn powerful rewards, these items should never scale down to where they do not give an increase in Power. Even if your Power is 100 over an activity’s recommended level, it should still grant a reward at least one Power level above your current average. This means that players should still benefit when grouping with teammates who haven’t accomplished as much as they have.

We’ve also created multiple new sources of Power for powerful rewards that refresh on a different cadence than the weekly reset. The goal is to provide more to do for the players who want to play a variety of activities. That said, not every reward you find in the wild will be a powerful upgrade. We don’t want to spoil the entire journey to max Power, so we’ll be leaving it in the hands of the players to discover the best ways to reach endgame and beyond when Forsaken is released.

As a final note on Power, we’ve heard a lot of feedback concerning Exotics. To make these rewards feel more useful, whenever you receive an Exotic reward in Forsaken, it will always be at or above your Guardian’s Power.

Milestones

The Milestone tray has been revamped in Forsaken, and will now specifically show the most important, nonrepeatable quests for every player of Destiny 2. The campaign quests are a good example of this. Meanwhile, our world quests for destinations will now live in the Pursuits section of your character inventory. Many Milestones from Year 1 have been converted to activity challenges. These will continue to grant powerful rewards, but they will no longer be displayed in the Milestone tray. When you access the Director, you’ll see activity challenges in the tooltip of the associated activity.

Activities

The base strike playlist for Destiny 2: Forsaken players has been updated to feature difficulty selection and modifiers. Heroic strikes are being retired on August 28 with Destiny Update 2.0.

Forsaken Players

The strike playlist has three difficulties to select from:

Power 300

Power 400

Power 500

Once you’re 40 Power over a given playlist, it will no longer appear as an option for you to select.

This ensures a healthy matchmaking pool when players reach endgame Power levels.

The Power 500 playlist will always available.

Strikes will have modifiers.

Legacy Players

The strike playlist matches the legacy playlist that is currently available in Year 1.

Recommended Power 200.

Strikes will have modifiers.

Between August 28 and September 4, modifiers will be unavailable for all strike playlists.

The Nightfall activity is also being revisited for Season 4. Prestige difficulty is being retired, but the base difficulty for the Nightfall activity will increase. Additionally, players will have the ability to choose one of three Nightfall strikes each week. If there’s a specific Nightfall Unique Reward that a given player is hunting for, this reduces the time they have to wait for the strike to be featured again. While having three options, players may only select the strikes for which they own the appropriate expansions. Legacy players will still be able to enable modifiers via their Challenge Card. Scoring will not be available for legacy players in the 270 Power Nightfall.

Meditations are being retired and replaced with a Heroic story playlist. New campaign missions will be featured at 500 Power, while old campaign missions will be set to a Power level relative to their release. This ensures legacy players can still enjoy story activities at their leisure.

Ikora Rey’s Vanguard Research reputation tokens will no longer be used as a currency after August 28 and will be removed from player inventories. The Legendary parade gear will also no longer be available, so if you want it, get it before August 28.

Heroic adventures are being added to all destinations. When that destination is the Flashpoint, one adventure will be selected to be Heroic per day, with the exceptions of Mercury and Mars. Those two destinations will function as they currently do, but they will gain an additional adventure per day when they're the featured Flashpoint. Players will no longer be able to purchase normal adventure tokens from vendors on destinations other than Mercury and Mars.

Activity modifiers will be shared across Heroic adventures, Heroic story missions, and strikes. This ensures that each day you know what to expect from the PvE content that you play as a ritual, and that when we balance and tune modifiers it’s happening across the game. This will include one weekly singe, one daily buff, and one daily debuff. The Brawler and Grenadier modifiers will have their recharge times adjusted to ensure they’re noticeable. Adjusting your equipment for either also has a rather significant impact. We’ve seen some pretty crazy plays by the new Solar Hunter in our playtest. Some experienced players out there may be reminded of the feelings found when they equipped Nothing Manacles in the past.

Economy Updates

For the last few weeks, we’ve seen a lot of players asking about items and currencies available in Year 1 and whether they’ll continue to be available in Year 2 or not. Expect the following changes on August 28, when Destiny Update 2.0 becomes available:

Destination materials will become your main source of reputation on their respective destinations.

Destination materials will be a part of the cost to infuse different weapons and armor across your arsenal.

Year 1 challenges that granted reputation tokens are being retired, but will be replaced by bounties offered on each destination that provide destination materials.

Destination tokens and Rare destination materials are no longer awarded, but you can still redeem them for reputation if you have them in your inventory.

Anything that previously granted destination tokens or Rare materials will reward Common destination materials moving forward.

The Gunsmith will also be updated in Season 4. In Year 1, this vendor required 40 Gunsmith Materials for one reputation package. This will increase to 100 Gunsmith Materials.

Iron Banner, Vanguard, and Crucible tokens earned in Season 3 may be redeemed at their respective vendors in Season 4. Trials of the Nine will be on hiatus during Season 4, and its reputation tokens will not be redeemable. At this time, we have not yet determined whether its currency will be used when it returns.

It’s Lit Fam

Lord Saladin makes his final appearance in Season 3 next week. This will be your last chance to earn your Season 3 rewards.

Begins: Tuesday, August 14

Ends: Tuesday, August 21

The game, as always, is Control!

There are a few changes to the Iron Banner Control you know and love. Iron Temple fire pits have replaced the usual Control flags. There is also a new Power Play rule where capturing all three zones will lock them down for 20 seconds. At the end of the Power Play, all the zones are reset to neutral and must be recaptured.

Power Enabled

Starting in Season 4, Iron Banner will be updated to enable Power level advantages, like in the days of old. All players of Destiny 2, regardless of expansion ownership, can participate in Iron Banner events. Year 2 rewards, featuring random rolls and compatibility with Year 2 modifications, will also be available to all players. Players who acquire new Power during their adventures in Forsaken will have an advantage, but we don’t want to exclude anyone who wants to compete in Iron Banner and reap the rewards. Iron Banner rewards will be capped for legacy players at their maximum Power available.

Trials of the Nine will be unavailable for the duration of Season 4. The design team is putting it back on the workbench to make it a fitting challenge for the hardcore warrior. When the weekly activity returns, it will feature updated rewards, Power advantages, and other gameplay changes. The final weekend of Season 3 Trials of the Nine will take place on the weekend of August 24.

We’ll tell you more about our goals and our progress during Season 4.

Faction Farewell

In Season 3, we introduced some changes, notably the Renown mechanic, to Faction Rallies. The community responded with a lot of great feedback about how we could continue to improve the experience. The feedback ranged in topic from experience to rewards, but many of you expressed the following:

I don’t want to feel forced to participate in every instance of the event each season

Make the event progression a bit less hardcore and more engaging

We plan to take that feedback and use it to improve activities and events in the future. When Season 4 begins, Faction Rallies will be on hiatus. This will give us a good opportunity to focus on some other areas of the game that need attention and reevaluate some of the fundamental aspects of the event.

While the Faction Rallies event is on hiatus, faction tokens will not be redeemable. We’ll tell you more about their fate in the future.

For players who were unable to acquire specific Exotic weapon catalysts during previous Faction Rallies, we are working on new ways for you to earn them. They will not be available at the beginning of Season 4, but we will provide more information on where to find these rewards when they do become available.

Eververse

As a new season begins with the launch of Forsaken, Eververse also gets a refresh.

Goals and Philosophies

Provide players with more data

Share Bright Engram reward probabilities on bungie.net

Provide players their private purchase history on bungie.net

Give players more choices to earn rewards the way they want

Full season of Prismatic Matrix

Free weekly Prismatic Facet

More Bright Dust earned from new bounties

Allow players new ways to customize their Guardians

Ghost projections

Legendary weapon skins

New Exotic ornaments and emotes

Eververse Bounties

Similar to how other bounties work, Tess will start offering bounties that reward Bright Dust to players. Here’s how they work:

Each Bright Engram grants one bounty note in Season 4

Bounties refresh weekly, but players can acquire as many Eververse bounties as they have bounty notes

These Notes can be exchanged for a three different tiers of weekly Eververse bounties

Tier 1:

Costs 1 Eververse Bounty Note

Rewards 20 Bright Dust

Tier 2:

Costs 3 Eververse Bounty Notes

Rewards 70 Bright Dust

Tier 3:

Costs 6 Eververse Bounty Notes

Rewards 150 Bright Dust

You can carry one of each type at a time

Bounties will expire seven days after acquisition 

Prismatic Matrix

The Prismatic Matrix returns in Season 4. We received a lot of feedback that players enjoyed this feature and would have preferred if it had stayed active for all of Season 3. This time, we plan to keep the Prismatic Matrix live all through Season 4. The free weekly Prismatic Facet will be obtained from a special Tier 1 Eververse bounty. This bounty does not require a bounty note and will cost 250 Glimmer. Players will still be able to hold the Prismatic Facets at one time. 

Bright Dust

Continuing with the theme of giving players more control over their Bright Dust balance, Bright Dust gained from dismantling Eververse items will be granted at a fixed rate. Players can now reliably dismantle items for specific gains.

Collections and Eververse Items

Eververse items will be retrieved from the Collections interface like all other items. An exception is Year 2 Eververse Armor, which (like all other armor with random rolls) cannot be reacquired from the Collections. The ways in which players acquire and interact with emotes and weapon/armor ornaments have not changed. All other items can be retrieved for an expense of Bright Dust.

Current season Eververse items which have not been acquired will display in the Collections interface until the end of the season. Past season Eververse items which have not been acquired will not display in the Collections interface. This prevents players from having incomplete Collections that cannot be completed.

Bright Engram Updates

New Legendary weapon ornaments have been added to the Bright Engram. These are unlocked account-wide like all other ornaments in the game. A new Ghost Projections category will also be added to Bright Engrams. This account-unlockable item permits players to put a holographic projection badge above their Ghost. This badge is only visible when the player has their Ghost deployed for Navigation Mode. Weapon and armor mods will no longer be dropping from the Bright Engram. In their place, players will now receive bounty notes.

Eververse Armor and Perks

With the addition of Random Perk Rolls on armor, we have made some changes to how perks are applied to Eververse Armor. Eververse Armor acquired from Bright Engrams will have random perks when rewarded. Eververse Armor acquired from sources like the Prismatic Matrix or the Bright Dust Storefront will have fixed perks.

Eververse Leveling Rewards in Forsaken

Like the Red War campaign in Destiny 2, in Forsaken, Bright Engrams will not be earned until you hit the level cap. As players complete pre-Forsaken campaigns they will be rewarded with an Eververse gift package tailored to each experience, which will also include Bright Engrams. Once players reach their level cap, based on what Expansions they own, Bright Engrams will once again be awarded each time a player levels up.

More Labs

Our last experiment in Crucible Labs went well. It’s time to put on your safety goggles and get back in there.

Senior Designer Andrew Weldon

has the details about what mode will be played in the next Crucible Labs.

Andrew: Hello again! Hopefully you’re all having an excellent Solstice of Heroes! I’ve been going scorched-Earth with my Dawnblade in my quest for yet another Destiny 2 t-shirt for the collection.

But, even in the midst of the celebration, The Science™ must continue! Thank you to all of you who played Lockdown in Labs! We saw a very positive feedback trend for the mode overall, but we also received some good feedback on areas to explore for improvement. We’ll be examining that feedback as we continue to close down Forsaken, and we’ll provide updates in the future as we have them.

Speaking of updates… in our first TWAB post discussing the Crucible Labs debut, I spoke about how we started fairly simple with the mode Showdown. We met our goals for the rollout, but as noted, the reception of Showdown itself was fairly mixed. Iteration is a critical phase of development, and we’ve taken some time to iterate a bit on Showdown based on notes we gathered both internally and externally from all of you. Here’s the set of changes we’ve made for this next iteration:

The round time limit has been reduced to 90 seconds

Rounds now have a score limit of 10

Revives are now enabled

Reviving a teammate before they respawn will take the point back from your opponents

Whether you played Showdown in the first Labs or this will be your first time in the playlist, we hope you’ll drop in for a few matches and let us know what you think. Hit up the feedback forum with your thoughts after you’ve played! As with Lockdown, Labs will continue to drop standard Crucible rewards and contribute to your Valor rating, so your time spent here will also count if you’re working through your ranks for the Triumphs and armor. And, of course—you can play the new Showdown right now.

Valor for All

If you’ve been working on your Solstice armor, you may notice a few objectives tied to the Crucible. Once you reach Legendary-tiered armor, your final Crucible objective is to have your Valor rank reset at some point since Crucible Ranks were implemented.

Leading up to the beginning of Year 2, you’ll see multiple opportunities to earn Valor points at an accelerated rate including a special triple Valor Iron Banner weekend. Mark your calendars appropriately:

Double Valor Week Start: 10 AM PDT on August 10, 2018 End: 10 AM PDT on August 17, 2018

Triple Valor Weekend Start: 10 AM PDT on August 17, 2018 End: 10 AM PDT on August 21, 2018

Final Double Valor Weekend Start: 10 AM PDT on August 24, 2018 End: 10 AM PDT on August 28, 2018

Happy hunting, and we hope to see you out there.

Not All Heroes Wear Capes

Player Support is hard at work tracking known issues with the Solstice of Heroes event. If you are blocked, they have the info you need to get back to upgrading your armor.

This is their report.

Destiny 2 Hotfix 1.2.3.2To resolve issues blocking some players from upgrading their Solstice armor at the Statue of Heroes, we will be deploying Destiny 2 Hotfix 1.2.3.2 on Monday, August 13. Players who were in this blocked state prior to Hotfix 1.2.3.2 will be able to resolve their issue by interacting with the Statue of Heroes in the Tower once this hotfix has been installed. Please be aware that this hotfix will cause the “Solstice of Heroes” milestone to linger for previously affected players, even after their Solstice Armor is upgraded completely. No rewards will be missed, and this message will disappear when Solstice of Heroes concludes on August 28. To see the Hotfix 1.2.3.2 deployment schedule when it’s available, players should follow @BungieHelp on Twitter or monitor our support feed on help.bungie.net. Solstice Armor Vital InformationLeading into the second week of Solstice of Heroes, Destiny Player Support began receiving reports from players encountering issues upgrading their Solstice Armor. To speak directly to these concerns, we have listed vital information that players should be aware of when upgrading their armor for Solstice of Heroes:

Solstice Armor can only be upgraded during the Solstice of Heroes event, which ends at the weekly reset on August 28.

Once players unlock their legendary Solstice armor, they will be presented with the Masterwork upgrade requirement, “Achieve the Legend rank in the Valor Crucible rankings.” To accomplish this, players must max out their Valor ranking with a Valor score of 2,000, then complete one more match.

Players who achieved maximum Valor ranking before the start of Solstice of Heroes and/or have previously reset their Valor ranking and whose Legend requirement is not already marked as complete may also need to complete an additional match.

Objective percentages on Solstice Armor may round up to the nearest whole digit. If players see that their Solstice Armor displays 100% progress, but is not marked as complete, they should continue performing its listed objective.

Solstice of Heroes and Moments of Triumph Known Issues

Listed below are the latest known issues that players should be aware of during Solstice of Heroes and Moments of Triumph:

Some players who achieve 250 Triumph points or more may encounter the bungie.net error “input parameters are invalid” when receiving their Solstice of Heroes T-Shirt code from their bungie.net profile. Players who encounter this error should try accessing their code through the Destiny Companion app. The official Destiny Companion app is available via the iOS App Store and the Google Play Store.

On some mobile devices, players may be unable to see their Solstice of Heroes T-Shirt code when viewing the Destiny Companion app in portrait mode. Affected players should rotate their device into landscape mode to view their code.

Players on PC have reported that Redux mission statues in the Tower may sometimes not be interactable when approached, even with a full Solstice Armor set equipped. According to player reports, launching into another activity then returning to the Tower may be a potential workaround.

Players on console may encounter an issue in Redux missions Payback and 1AU where the Drake tank does not steer left or right. Players encountering this issue should try clearing their console cache.

For the latest information on known issues as they are discovered, players should visit ourSolstice of Heroes Known Issues thread . For more information on Moments of Triumph, players should visit our Moments of Triumph Guide . Players who encounter other issues with Solstice Armor or Moments of Triumph should submit a report to the #Help forum.

[attract-mode-collective]

Scorpion Vs. Elon Musk’s Mom: FIGHT

Yes, that is indeed Elon Musk’s mother up there. And no, I do not have a bigger sized version of the pic. Guess we could always ask captain-price-official if one does exist.

Or perhaps make your own? Here’s Elon’s mum by herself (and in higher res)...

And with that, it’s time to see what else I tweeted during the first half of March! So, sticking with fighting games: which Street Fighter character does lighting better? Ryu, via the animated movie (via settei)...

… Or Bison, via the live action flick (via toghomevideo)...

I absolutely love win quotes from rom hacks (via bison2winquote)...

I have a massive backlog of games, yet Tekken 7 just shot straight to the top of the list, thanks to the knowledge that you can accurately recreate Dynamite Headdy characters (via mysterious0bob)...

This Hatsune Miku X Space Channel 5 figure is v. nice (via nendoroidoftheday)...

A friendly reminder to everyone that A. I'm a massive fan of Seaman & B. my birthday is about a month away (via nutastic)...

This scene at the beach with a Figma of Link, from A Link Between Worlds, feels more like Link's Awakening than anything else (via vyntic)...

Toys and models are no longer just for reenacting memorable in-game moments, they can also reproduce famous IRL events that surrounded the games themselves (via 8bitcentral)...

So what's the going rate for ET for the Atari 2600 that was supposedly dug up in for that so-called documentary, Atari: Game Over? Which I recently re-watched and still can't believe people think is real. At any rate, am assuming the autograph from Howard Scott Warshaw gives it some actual value (via it8bit)...

And what's the going rate for Chinese Famiclone karaoke carts, primarily one with Jackie Chan on the label. Am also wondering if it's cuz his songs are included... you are aware of his successful career in music as well, right? (via ulan-bator)...

Been struggling to come up with a zinger for the past 10 minutes, but ain't nuthin gonna beat "Welcome to the Velvet Room y'all!" (via jatayu)...

To be filed under: it's funny cuz it's true (via doctorbutler)...

So the weather has been awful around these parts, lots of rain & snow, which gets in the way of imagining a giant tetromino in the sky (via uvula.jp)...

When playing Super Mario Galaxy 2, please keep in mind that somewhere out there, despite being out of view, is the ghost of Luigi floating through vast stretches of empty space, with zero destination or purpose (via suppermariobroth)...

Speaking of Luigi, and Supper Mario Broth; they’ve taken the adventures he talks about in Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door and illustrated them in the form of a comic that closely adheres to the style of the game...

Also a friendly reminder of that rift between Mario & Luigi for a few years (they'd eventually make up & resume doing games together, as everyone knows) after Mario discovered his brother being all friendly with the enemy in Super Mario World (via peazy86)...

Yet another obscure Mario factoid: the move he uses to defeat Bowser in Super Mario 64 originates from an old furikake commercial that predates the game by about a decade (via suppermariobroth)...

Yet another random gif of Mario from the 80s, this one from a video guide from Super Mario Bros; I miss the days in which his look was not yet standardized (via suppermariobroth)...

And here we have a completely unlicensed Dr. Mario, unless Nintendo gave him the OK to brush up on his doctoring skills by assuming an alias at a family clinic in Houston TX (via suppermariobroth)...

It's funny how, when it comes to obscure Mario games, everyone brings up Mario Is Missing or Hotel Mario, but what about Super Mario Bros. & Friends: When I Grow Up? (via kazucrash)...

Mario gets his own breakfast cereal.

Luigi? Booze. (via @carolynmichelle)

A question that I posed on MAR10Day (via retrogamerblog)...

It's not Super Mario Bros, but simply…. Bros (via therubberfruit)...

I've never wanted something "bootleg" to be official as much as as this Dark Souls fan art. And if the actual game somehow looked like this, that would be... gladly welcomed (via gamefreaksnz)

Oh God, Nier is amazing and all, but I would SO be down for a yelling & screaming match with Yoko Taro on this point (via @Avisch_)...

Behold my fave Twitter thread in recent memory: "You see, that was taken from Africa, but it belonged to the Keyblade Masters. Imma take it off your hands for ya."

"Nah, It was taken by British soldiers in Africa but it's actually from Gaia. A sword far heavier than any sword has rights to be, yet a true 1st Class will wield it with ease. Don't trip, I'm gonna take it off your hands for you."

"Nah, It was taken by British soldiers in Africa but it's actually from Hyrule. Originally crafted by the goddess Hylia herself. Only a true hero that is pure of heart and strong of body is capable of wielding the sacred blade. Don't trip, I'm gonna take it off your hands for you."

Naturally the star of Home Alone 1 & Home Alone 2 has both a NES Classic and Famicom Mini, like all Hollywood bigwigs (via @SimonParkin)...

While discussing Ready Player One with a colleague, was reminded of the dude who was so inspired by the book that he turned his apartment into an arcade (and then his fiancé broke up with him; via nydailynews.com)...

Recently there was some kind of event at Sega HQ, I think? Details are basically nonexistent due to the language barrier, but far as I can gather, 16 super fans were invited to come by & party (via @SEGA_OFFICIAL)...

... If you check out #セガ公式アカウントオフ会 you'll see numerous pics from the get-together, though the one thing that stands out is the assortment of Sega hardware (via @KK__Cy)...

... MIA, cuz no variants were on display, is my fave alt ver. of the Mega Drive: the Wondermega. But @yu100s took one of his own… with the ugly ass US Sonic 1 NOT FOR RESALE cart inserted, Jesus fucking Christ...

The Sega logo in katakana looks pretty hawt (via @Exciteless)...

... Yet the Sega logo in Arabic which is official, is even hawter (via boingboing.net)...

Please enjoy your daily recommended dosage of an erotic hospital-management sim (via @topherflorence)...

NCSX makes the fidget spinner comparison, though the fidget cube seems a bit more appropriate; behold the fidget game controller...

Toy Fair recently took place, and naturally I took tons of pictures. You can find all of them on my personal Instagram, though a few are worth re-posting here. Like the latest in NECA's line of classic movie characters, as they appeared in video game adaptations...

Though in the case of their take on the Alien vs. Predator arcade game, they even included Capcom's original characters...

Unpainted, pre-production figures from Reflection's upcoming Ghost 'N Goblins line, sporting the oh-so popular Kenner-eqsue retro look...

Pint-sized arcade cabs, available this fall for $400. They’ll come unassembled, though dead simple to put together; the construction of the assembled mini cab was surprisingly sturdy, plus the screen wasn't bad (contrary to the picture that my iPhone's camera paints). Though the controls were shit; no word on whether the parts can be swapped or not...

Was delighted to not not only see Cuphead merch at Toy Fair, but more than just one instance (though this was the only time I was allowed to take a picture)...

Came across a producer of infant goods that had a selection of Super Mario baby bibs...

I asked the rep if this was their first foray into video games and the answer was "Yes." And when asked who's been mostly buying them, was told "Video game collectors, who don't even have children… it's so bizarre!!!"

Sticking with bibs, here's a set that tied to Dragon Quest (via miki800.com)...

... I asked on Twitter what they said and @alexfkraus was kind enough to provide translations, here and here.

Was so inspired by @MinusWorld listing which characters he'd like to see in the next Super Smash Bros that I decided to cite a few of my own:

- Mona from WarioWare - Nester from Nintendo Power’s Howard & Nester comics - Link from that Japanese A Link To The Past commercial - A deck of Hanafuda cards

... BTW, had no idea Ollie also mentioned a Hanafuda; I only saw his initial four, initially! Anyhow, my second round of choices:

- Ashley from Another Code - The "who are you running from?" guy in the Game Boy Camera - Lucas from The Wizard - The 4WD from Stunt Race FX (since Fighters Megamix with the Daytona USA 2 car clearly ain't ever happening)

I alas forgot to include BoxBoy, much like how I got these Uniqlo shirts when they were on sale last year (via minusworld.co.uk)...

Here we have my fave reaction on Tumblr to the Nintendo Direct with the Smash 5 reveal, if only for the punchline (via mendelpalace)...

And here we have my fave reaction on Twitter (via @redford)...

This one is also great because wrestling (via @SteveYurko)...

Speaking of wrestling, remember that time Tazz, while commentating for Smackdown, was also playing a game of Final Fantasy X-2… or so he thought? (via defjamvendetta)

"hey quick question whoever's developing the wwe games now: what the fuck"

"It helps him eat small fish"

"better question: why isn't this an option in every game ever"

"FAIR POINT" (via snoozlebee)

Whereas most publishers in Japan, during the 80s & 90s, had festivals (or carnivals) centered around shmups, Asmik's was based on women's wrestling (via oldgamemags)...

It's not for a video game, though the illustration is by someone who has been involved in a few; it's by Satoshi Yoshioka, of Snatcher and Policenauts fame (via videogamesdensetsu)...

It's not for a video game that actually exists, but is instead a completely fictional instructional manual, one that makes you wish it was real (via tomeccles)...

Just when you think you've seen every ultra, wacky & obscure video game box art there is to see out there (via @CoolBoxArt)...

I have a serious soft sport for the usage of video game imagery among early 80s musicians (via siryl)...

... What the final product looks like BTW/FYI...

A. so there's a VR version of Fruit Ninja, did not know that, & B. if you like watching people play it (for whatever reason), yet wish you could actually see a person swinging a sword and not just some abstract swiping motions… here ya go (via prostheticknowledge)...

Playing games in VR is so 2017… Handling your collection of games in VR? Now THAT is very 2018 (via mendelpalace)...

Lots of friends are playing the new DBZ fighting game, though I'll give it a shot once it hits the arcades and is also in a cab like this (via @Fotosdecomics)...

I absolutely need to get my hands on this S.H. Figuarts Shinya Arino (via tinycartridge)...

Available right now, some Altered Beast, Bare Knuckles, and Rent-a-Hero resin kits (via miki800.com)...

Cursed? More like blessed amirite (via @Pretzel_Pup)...

I know Yoji Shinkawa is best buds with Hideo Kojima, but would he be open to doing another gig at Konami? Cuz him art directing a reboot of Twin Bee would kinda be the best (via @SESKOU)...

There's money on the table with this Metroid X Pepsi mash-up, am confident of this (via ryangilleece)...

Cuz even someone like Samus Aran needs a good stretch every once in a while (via jon-bliss)...

And this third piece of Metroid fan art in a row is very much related to Metroid 3, aka Super Metroid (even though it technically depicts the ending to Metroid 2; via mmillus)...

Awakening indeed (via brookietf)...

For those who have asked, yes, I have seen the hack that connects the Switch to an itty-bitty black & white TV...

Though I'm only really interested in tiny b&w CRT TVs if I can play Duck Hunt on them (via arcade-crusade)...

I not only dig teeny-tiny displays for light gun games, but also for driving games as well (perhaps some of you might remember the following from this)...

Back to tube displays; seeing Zelda on a CRT also reminded me of how Dark Souls look on a CRT, aka CRT Souls or 480i Souls (which again I'm hoping regular readers of the blog remember, especially since the original post has fallen victim to a Tumblr bug)...

"while playing king's field just now i died in the magic cave of fire and when i warped back there were beautiful graphical glitches everywhere" (via mendelpalace)...

Some landscapes, filled with beauty and mystery and terror, are accidental (see: the graphical glitches from before)… whereas others are completely deliberate, as in the case of Atlantia (via obscurevideogames)...

Once again, I REALLY need to figure out a way to play some PC88 games (via obscurevideogames)...

Here we have a semi-common Space Invaders sighting for the time, in an episode of Battle Fever J, one of the earliest Super Sentai shows (via himitsusentaiblog)...

And here we have a rare Game Gear sighting, in old OVA anime, Starship Girl Yamamoto Yohko. Hell, it’s a rare Game Gear in anything sighting; the only other example that comes to mind is Rumble In The Bronx (via @TheOtaking)...

And an equally rare Sonic on the runway sighting (via kotaku.com)...

I normally watch a video in its entirety before making a recommendation. Yet when it came to this overview of Last Bronx's legacy in Japan (and lack thereof in the West), hearing the main theme to Beat Takeshi's Violent Cop near the 3 min mark was all I needed (have since watched the whole thing, and as expected, it's another awesome Kim Justice production)...

And finally, a friend notes: "subzero's right arm is real close to trump's spinal column

just sayin" (via @jbillinson)...

[woodworkingpastor]

Not a fan -- Galatians 3:1-9, 23-29 -- May 16, 2021 -- Seventh Sunday of Easter

One of my favorite episodes of The Twilight Zone is the season four episode “Jess-Belle.” The main reason I enjoy it is because it stars James Best—many of you will remember him for his more famous role as Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane on The Dukes of Hazzard. But the episode has some other endearing qualities as well.

The plot focuses on the upcoming marriage of Best’s character, Billy-Ben Turner, to a young woman named Ellwyn Glover. The conflict comes as Billy-Ben’s ex-girlfriend Jess-Belle plots to sabotage the wedding and win Billy-Ben back. Jess-Belle visits a local witch named Granny Hart, who casts a spell that bewitches Billy-Ben, causing him to forget Ellwyn and fall madly in love with Jess-Belle.

This is exactly what happens at a square dance thrown in honor of Billy-Ben and Ellwyn: Jess-Belle shows up and locks eyes with Billy-Ben who immediately forgets everything and dances off into the night with Jess-Belle, leaving Ellwyn and everyone else in utter disbelief about his behavior. But Billy-Ben can’t help himself; he has been bewitched, pulled away into a one relationship that makes the other relationship impossible. It’s a situation where compromise is not possible.

The situation of Galatians 3

Paul’s purpose in writing to the churches of Galatia is to correct false teaching that has brought confusion into the churches. The reason the conflict is so significant is because it is a salvation issue: a false belief that calls into question how people are reconciled to God has been introduced into the churches. As I think back on disagreements I’ve encountered in ministry, very few (if any) have been of this type. That’s not to say they’ve been unimportant or that they shouldn’t be handled with great care. But sometimes we draw lines in the sand over issues that are really more about personal preferences on matters where there are several legitimate choices; or we get into arguments that are driven as much by the personality of the people involved as they are the issue; or we have trouble reconciling matters because we’re impatient, or we’re not willing to yield to one another.

But this is not the issue in Galatia, and the significance of the matter explains the very strong words Paul choses in verses 1 and 3:

You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you?...Are you so foolish?

Eugene Peterson translates the passage this way:

You crazy Galatians! Did someone put a hex on you? Have you taken leave of your senses? Something crazy has happened, for it’s obvious that you no longer have the crucified Jesus in clear focus in your lives. His sacrifice on the cross was certainly set before you clearly enough.

Let me put this question to you: How did your new life begin? Was it by working your heads off to please God? Or was it by responding to God’s Message to you? Are you going to continue this craziness? For only crazy people would think they could complete by their own efforts what has begun by God (Galatians 3:1-3, The Message).

Honestly, Paul’s words here read more like the kind of response you find on a Facebook post than in a sermon or Bible study—except here it is in the Bible. Paul’s urgency and intensity has to do with his commitment to the Gospel and his great love for these congregations.

As we have moved from Acts 15 into Galatians over these last several Sundays, we keep bumping into the struggle that the churches had over the role the Jewish tradition would play in their understanding of faith. It is simply the issue that the church of this generation had to work out. What is distant from our thinking is that there were two components to the Jewish religious tradition: a ceremonial aspect and a moral aspect.

The moral laws represented how the character of God would be displayed in their lives. One way that we honor God in our daily lives is through our behavior coming to reflect God’s character; we begin doing the kinds of things Jesus would do if he were in our place. This explains the reason why, for instance, Christians value life and have always been moved to alleviate suffering. I believe it’s why we should be concerned about the environment, because the earth is the Lord’s. It’s why we do things like offer forgiveness when others mistreat us.

These things are easy to talk about in general; they can be quite costly in practice. I heard a podcast recently where a now middle-aged man shared a painful story from his youth. One day when he was a young teenager, he and some of his friends were acting irresponsibly, and this man’s actions led directly to the death of his best friend. In working with the justice system, the friend’s parents declined to press charges. Their belief was that their son’s death was a tragic accident caused by young boys being stupid, and that one ruined life was enough. They did not believe that any good would come by inflicting that on another; mercy was more important than punishment. It was a remarkable story of forgiveness.

It is through this kind of living—where our behavior reflects God’s character—that people who do not know Jesus might begin to follow. Or, as Brennan Manning describes it from the opposite direction:

The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, walk out the door, and deny Him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.

Manning laments a loss of discipleship in churches that allows for a disconnect to exist between belief and behavior.

But this wasn’t exactly the issue the Galatian Christians faced. They were largely struggling with the ceremonial laws found in the Jewish faith; the kinds of things that Jesus transgressed all the time, like when he healed people on the Sabbath or when the disciples walked through grainfields and ate some of the grain, or when Jesus stopped by a well and asked a woman for a drink of water. What people in Galatia were in danger of getting wrong was thinking that adding these ceremonial laws to our lives is necessary for us to be good Christians. Practices that were supposed to be reminders of what we believe and ceremonies designed to shape our faith had become rigid rules to follow.

I have found that as someone grows in their love for Jesus then their desire to participate in the worship services and ceremonies of the church grows right along with it.

How natural it is for people who significantly understand our faith as being shaped by the Scripture to give Bibles to our young people, as we did today.

For people who understand how much our relationship with God is shaped by our having been forgiven and are serious about growing closer to Jesus by practicing forgiveness, then it makes so much sense to be drawn to Love Feast and to communion. Many of us value that worship service because of the tradition, but I want to encourage you to expand your thinking on that. If anyone understands how badly broken our relationships with God have really become, it ought to be Brethren. We don’t just practice the bread and cup, we practice spiritual examination to make sure we are right with God and one another, then we practice humility by washing feet.

When we are thinking correctly, we understand that the ceremonies do not save us, but they do shape us. John Chrysostom was a fourth century church leader who described the connection between ceremonies and faith in this way:

When [a ceremonial ordinance] is understood it produces spiritual joy and is celebrated gladly and in due season. It is read and treated only with a spiritual sweetness. Now every sacrament, once understood in this way, is applied either to the contemplation of truth or to good morals. The contemplation of truth is founded in the love of God alone, good morals in the love of God and the neighbor, and on these two precepts depend the whole Law and the Prophets.

This is what the Galatians were risking getting wrong, and it is why Paul is so angry. In a way, they were like Billy-Ben Turner in The Twilight Zone who had a magnificent relationship with his fiancée and the admiration and joy of his community for the love he shared with Ellwyn, but who instead became bewitched by an old, dead-end relationship that was lesser in so many ways. Some in Galatia wanted to take all of the Old Testament laws from Leviticus and hand them to new Christians after they had become baptized and say, “Here. You must do these things, too.”

The reason it is important to understand a proper relationship with Jesus is because it is the only path to what the church is to become, as described in Galatians 3:27-28:

As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

When a church lives out a correct understanding of salvation, the inevitable result is becoming the church where distinctions that society places on us disappear. It’s not that we become blind; the Galatians would still know who was a Jew and was Greek; who was a slave and who was free; who was male and who was female. But they could begin valuing people and their gifts based on what Jesus had done in their lives, not on what their culture told them to think. They would be a visible demonstration of the Kingdom of God.

Can you imagine how different our world would be today if we had figured out “neither slave nor free” 400 years ago? Consider that in 1667 the Virginia General Assembly decided

It is enacted and declared by this Grand Assembly, and the authority thereof, that the conferring of baptism does not alter the condition of the person as to his bondage or freedom (Tisby, 25).

This was an important law because in England the tradition was that baptism did confer freedom.

Or what if we had affirmed the equality of women? I’m thankful that the Williamson Road Church of the Brethren asked the question that enabled the Annual Conference in 1958 to enable women’s ordination. This meant that women could take their place alongside women preachers in the New Testament like Junia and Priscilla and Tryphaena and Tryphosa and Phoebe and other women who were prominent leaders in the New Testament church.

Applying this to our own time

These verses in Galatians 3 are yet one more reminder of how God is always moving toward the reconciliation of all things, and how the ceremonial laws and worship traditions of our faith are means to the ends, not the ends themselves.

Something that will both challenge and bless us is that following Jesus in this way will cause us to move toward people and honor people that we otherwise might not; it will also require us to get out of the way and allow others to shine.

The good news is that the bewitching spell can be broken, sisters and brothers. Billy-Ben Turner wasn’t forever a prisoner to Jess-Belle’s spell. It was eventually broken and he and Ellwyn were married, as it should be. Our obedience to Jesus will make us “heirs according to the promise” of God.

[sunshineweb]

Thinking, the Einstein Way

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Here is some stuff I am reading and thinking about this weekend…

Book I’m Reading – Who Moved My Cheese I read this little book multiple times before quitting my job to start work on Safal Niveshak in 2011. It is about, well, coping up positively with change. Who Moved My Cheese illustrates the simple fact that change will happen, whether we choose to accept it or not. The defining factor is how we deal with it; whether we allow ourselves to change or insist on staying the same.

The story involves four characters who live in a maze: the mice Scurry and Sniff, and two little people named Hem and Haw. They find a huge source of cheese in the maze. Hem and Haw move their houses to be near it and the cheese becomes the centre of their lives. But they do not notice that it is getting smaller, and are devastated when they arrive at the site one morning and find the cheese is gone. Having built their lives around the big cheese, they feel they are the victims of fraud. Yet this only makes things worse, as their clinging on ensures that they go hungry.

The mice Scurry and Sniff, on the other hand, quickly accept the loss of the cheese and go off into the maze in search of other sources. For them, the solution is simple: the situation has changed, so they must change.

The fable captures that moment and experiences we are all familiar with i.e., sudden, unexpected change. The author’s message comes out loud and clear and that is that instead of seeing change as the end of something, we must learn to see it as a beginning. Like, to make himself accept reality, Haw writes this on the wall of the maze –

If you do not change, you can become extinct.

Another of my favourite quotes from the book is –

What would you do if you weren’t afraid?

And finally, here’s an advice from Haw that has helped me immensely at various stages of my life –

Sometimes, Hem, things change and they are never the same again. This looks like one of those times. That’s life! Life moves on. And so should we.

Idea I’m Thinking – Visual Thinking Here’s a note from Ashlee Vance’s biography of Elon Musk…

Visual thinking, which is a way to organise information in a visual way or to see words as a series of pictures, is a great way to understand complex or potentially confusing information, and also a way to organize your thoughts and improve your ability to think and communicate.

As a 15 year old, Albert Einstein dropped out of school because his teachers didn’t approve of visual imagination for learning, skills which became fundamental to his way of thinking. “Imagination is more important than knowledge,” Einstein would say.

“When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing knowledge,” Einstein explained later in his career. He added, “I never came upon any of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking.”

In Seeing What Others Don’t: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights, Gary Klein writes –

At the age of sixteen, Einstein began to conduct thought experiments about beams of light. These thought experiments were mental exercises that helped Einstein appreciate properties of light and also helped him notice anomalies and inconsistencies. Einstein imagined different conditions and possibilities, pursuing these speculations for ten years.

Imagine someone talking to you, and starting with the word – “Imagine…” You are completely hooked, isn’t it?

Consider this excerpt from Richard Feynman’s The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, where his father helps him visualize about dinosaurs –

We had the Encyclopedia Britannica at home and even when I was a small boy my father used to sit me on his lap and read to me from the Encyclopedia Britannica, and we would read, say, about dinosaurs and maybe it would be talking about the brontosaurus or something, or tyrannosaurus rex, and it would say something like, ‘This thing is twenty-five feet high and the head is six feet across,’ you see, and so he’d stop and say, ‘let’s see what that means. That would mean that if he stood in our front yard he would be high enough to put his head through the window but not quite because the head is a little bit too wide and it would break the window as it came by.’ Everything we’d read would be translated as best as we could into some reality and so I learned to do that – everything that I read I try to figure out what it really means, what it’s really saying by translating.

Then consider how Warren Buffett visually convinced me why gold was a bad investment…

I will say this about gold. If you took all the gold in the world, it would roughly make a cube 67 feet on a side… Now for that same cube of gold, it would be worth at today’s market prices about $7 trillion dollars – that’s probably about a third of the value of all the stocks in the United States… For $7 trillion dollars… you could have all the farmland in the United States, you could have about seven Exxon Mobils, and you could have a trillion dollars of walking-around money… And if you offered me the choice of looking at some 67-foot cube of gold and looking at it all day, and you know me touching it and fondling it occasionally…Call me crazy, but I’ll take the farmland and the Exxon Mobils.

I’ve tried my hands at visual thinking through the illustrations I draw on my Wall of Ideas to think through things.

When it comes to investing, you can avoid yourself a lot of pain by just visualizing your life after you’ve lost a lot of money trading and speculating in the stock market. If the visuals unnerve you, don’t do anything that would get you into such a situation. That’s also the concept of inversion.

Thoughts I’m Meditating On

How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people — first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving.

~ Albert Einstein

When something bad happens you have three choices. You can either let it define you, let it destroy you, or you can let it strengthen you.

~ Theodor Seuss Geisel

Video I’m Watching – Buffett and Gates on Success

Buffett on what matters more than IQ and talent: “How I got here is pretty simple in my case. It’s not IQ, I am sure you will be glad to hear. The big thing is rationality. I always look at IQ and talent as representing the horsepower of the motor, but the output — the efficiency with which the motor works — depends on rationality. A lot of people start out with 400 horsepower motors but only get 100 horsepower of rationality. It is way better to have a 200 horsepower motor and get it all in output.”

Buffett on regrets: “I never look back. I don’t worry about anything… You play the hand you get, you play it as well as you can… and you’re thankful.”

Gates on dealing with success: “You’ve got to enjoy what you do everyday. Every time I think I found a little success, I’m pretty careful not to dwell on it very much. The bar gets raised. People’s expectations change.”

Articles I’m Reading

Knowledge of the Future (Latest Memo from Howard Marks)

Jeff Bezos’ 2019 Letter to Shareholders (Amazon)

The Practice of Value Investing, by Li Lu (Longriver)

James Montier on Fear and Investment (Masters in Business Podcast)

Unintended Consequences, Part II: What if LTCM Was Not Rescued? (Barry Ritholtz)

How COVID-19 Is Wreaking Havoc On Our Ability To Make Things — Including Vaccines (Five Thirty Eight)

Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates both do this mundane chore that may have significant mental benefits (CNBC)

A Question for You If you were dying, what worries you won’t be worrying about that you are worrying about today?

We are all dying. But sometimes we need to remind ourselves of this question to enjoy living.

Anyways, before I end, here’s something from Winnie the Pooh –

“What day is it?” “It’s today”, squeaked Piglet. “My favorite day”, said Pooh.

Enjoy today. Stay safe. Stay sane. Be grateful for this life, — Vishal

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[dazstormretro]

Discovering Retro Gaming Part 1

Over the last 43 blogs I’ve shared some of my favourite gaming memories from my childhood, the consoles I once owned and the fantastic games which me and my friends played back in the early to late 90’s. Jump to 2019 and I’m once again enjoying those classic titles all over again, on the original hardware plus discovering new games and consoles which I never had the opportunity to own back in the day. So what drew me to this unusual hobby we call ‘retro gaming’?

It all started about eleven years ago. As previously mentioned I’ve been a gamer since a young age and would always strive to get my hands on the latest gaming console. Nearing the end of 2008 I purchased a PS3, the newest and most exciting games system on the market at the time. The problem was after shelling out a load of cash on the newest console available I was stuck with just one game, a copy of Grand Theft Auto 4. The game was enjoyable and looked amazing on the next gen hardware but the gameplay itself soon became monotonous, not quite living up to San Andreas which I had thoroughly enjoyed on the PS2. As the weeks went on I found myself playing less and less on my new console, had I just thrown over £400 down the drain, even worse had I finally grown out of video games?

It wasn’t long before my childhood friend, Ben sent me a text asking if I had a free evening for him to come over and give my new PS3 a whirl. We agreed on the following weekend. At this point I had no interest in retro gaming, that was all in the past but thought it would be a laugh to try and get my hands on an old console for the night. I set about scanning eBay for an old Super Nintendo as this was the system we played together back in the day. This was just before the UK boom in retro gaming so prices were still relatively cheap. I ended up purchasing a SNES, two controllers, a copy of Mario Kart and a copy of NBA Jam (two of the games we played the most as kids) all for the grand total of £40.

This little surprise went down a storm and both me and Ben spent that Saturday evening reliving our childhood memories well into the early hours. I may not have been a retro gaming fan when I purchased that secondhand SNES but by the Sunday morning I had defiantly caught the bug. It’s amazing how many wonderful memories came flooding back when Mario Karts title screen music kicked in. Even though we were playing on a modern HD tv which made the 16bit graphics look blurry and pixelated it was the gameplay which had stood the test of time. For those few hours we were transported back in time to Bens old bedroom from 1993 where we would sit, listen to Guns and Roses and compete for first place in the Mushroom Cup.

Having that small taste of nostalgia had left me wanting more. I soon found myself regularly scanning eBay for more SNES games. The next on the list was Street Fighter 2 Turbo which I played to death as a teenager. Having originally forked out around £100 for an imported copy of the game back in the December 1992 I was quite happy picking up a loose cartridge for a couple of quid. Rather than buying up every cartridge which I came across I decided to concentrate on the games which I had previously owned or played as a teenager, a rule I still follow today.

As my collection of games grew I relocated the SNES to the spare bedroom where I connected it to a small CRT monitor which I was given to me by someone at work, now I had a true retro set up on the go. Playing these old games felt fantastic. It’s true to say some of the titles didn’t hold up as well as I remembered but it was more the initial experience of rediscovering the box art, reading the old gaming manuals and the excitement of starting up an old game which I hadn’t seen or heard in years which was most appealing.

Feeling myself slipping deeper and deeper into the retro wormhole I looked for my next big nostalgia hit so I turned my attention to old gaming magazines. Back in the 90’s I was a massive fan of the video games magazine. As a kid I would spend my pocket money on CVG, Mean Machines, NMS, Super Play in fact anything which related to my current console at the time. The first magazine which came to mind was Super Play, so into the eBay search bar it went. I couldn’t believe it when several issues of the magazine popped up on my screen. Images which I hadn’t laid eyes upon in years sent me right back to my childhood. I quickly purchased issue 26, the one with the the fantastic art work by Will Overton of the Final Fantasy Chocobo. A couple of days later I found an A4 sized envelope waiting for me when I returned from work, I was very excited.

That evening I read the issue from cover to cover. The condition of the magazine which was two decades old was immaculate, you would have thought it had been printed yesterday! It’s amazing how certain pages from that particular issue brought back lost memories especially the anime article featuring characters which I would draw over and over as a teenager. These images literally leapt off the page when I saw them for the first time in many years. I even enjoyed reading the old video game shop adverts from the back of magazine and was reminded of the high prices we once paid for games.

One magazine lead to another and before I knew it I had old issues of Mean Machines, Electronic Monthly, CVG and Games Master being dropped through my letterbox on a daily basis. Like with my game collecting I would only purchase magazines which I remembered owning as a kid and thanks to the amazing cover art most of these magazines proved to be surprisingly easy to track down.

One standout moment was receiving issue ten of NMS Magazine. I was flicking through this particular issue whilst enjoying a coffee when I stumbled across the letters page which included drawings sent in by the readers of their favourite video game characters. Turning to page ninety nine I almost spat out my coffee, there at the top of the page was my drawing of Ranma 1/2 for the Super Nintendo sketched in pencil crayon which I had sent to NMS wayback in 1993, I couldn’t believe it! As soon as a saw the picture the memories came flooding back of that day in question. I remember carefully copying the wonderful anime style artwork from a previous issue then using my expensive acrylic pencils (which had been purchased by my parents solely to be used during my GCSE Art coursework) to colour with picture. Over the next few months I would discovering yet more of my sketches which I had sent into the magazine over the years.

Similar to my ever-increasing SNES collection these magazines have unearthed so many wonderful memories from my past, but these weren’t just gaming related. I found I could map out large chunks of my childhood using these memories including holidays with my family, times spent with mates, birthdays, Christmas’s and many more. Being able to recount a particular game release date or console launch has helped pinpoint certain events long forgotten. I’m able to recount exactly what I did the day I received my copy of Secret of Mana for the SNES or the time my precious saved data was erased from my Final Fantasy 2 cart.

Retro gaming had now become an addiction, feeling that wave of nostalgia every time I opened a new eBay package was so fulfilling, I had to have more! Within a couple of months I had purchased a SNES, a number of classic games and a stack of magazines, now it was time to look for a new retro console.... but which one to choose?

[thesnhuup]

Pop Picks – October 31

October 31, 2019

What I’m listening to: 

It drove his critics crazy that Obama was the coolest president we ever had and his summer 2019 playlist on Spotify simply confirms that reality. It has been on repeat for me. From Drake to Lizzo (God I love her) to Steely Dan to Raphael Saadiq to Sinatra (who I skip every time – I’m not buying the nostalgia), his carefully curated list reflects not only his infinite coolness, but the breadth of his interests and generosity of taste. I love the music, but I love even more the image of Michelle and him rocking out somewhere far from Washington’s madness, as much as I miss them both.

What I’m reading: 

I struggled with Christy Lefteri’s The Beekeeper of Aleppo for the first 50 pages, worried that she’d drag out every tired trope of Mid-Eastern society, but I fell for her main characters and their journey as refugees from Syria to England. Parts of this book were hard to read and very dark, because that is the plight of so many refugees and she doesn’t shy away from those realities and the enormous toll they take on displaced people. It’s a hard read, but there is light too – in resilience, in love, in friendships, the small tender gestures of people tossed together in a heartless world. Lefteri volunteered in Greek refugee programs, spent a lot of interviewing people, and the book feels true, and importantly, heartfelt.

What I’m watching:

Soap opera meets Shakespeare, deliciously malevolent and operatic, Succession has been our favorite series this season. Loosely based on the Murdochs and their media empire (don’t believe the denials), this was our must watch television on Sunday nights, filling the void left by Game of Thrones. The acting is over-the-top good, the frequent comedy dark, the writing brilliant, and the music superb. We found ourselves quoting lines after every episode. Like the hilarious; “You don’t hear much about syphilis these days. Very much the Myspace of STDs.” Watch it so we can talk about that season 2 finale.

Archive 

August 30, 2019

What I’m listening to: 

I usually go to music here, but the New York Times new 1619 podcast is just terrific, as is the whole project, which observes the sale of the first enslaved human beings on our shores 400 years ago. The first episode, “The Fight for a True Democracy” is a remarkable overview (in a mere 44 minutes) of the centrality of racism and slavery in the American story over those 400 years. It should be mandatory listening in every high school in the country. I’m eager for the next episodes. Side note: I am addicted to The Daily podcast, which gives more color and detail to the NY Times stories I read in print (yes, print), and reminds me of how smart and thoughtful are those journalists who give us real news. We need them now more than ever.

What I’m reading: 

Colson Whitehead has done it again. The Nickel Boys, his new novel, is a worthy successor to his masterpiece The Underground Railroad, and because it is closer to our time, based on the real-life horrors of a Florida reform school, and written a time of resurgent White Supremacy, it hits even harder and with more urgency than its predecessor. Maybe because we can read Underground Railroad with a sense of “that was history,” but one can’t read Nickel Boys without the lurking feeling that such horrors persist today and the monsters that perpetrate such horrors walk among us. They often hold press conferences.

What I’m watching:

Queer Eye, the Netflix remake of the original Queer Eye for the Straight Guy some ten years later, is wondrously entertaining, but it also feels adroitly aligned with our dysfunctional times. Episode three has a conversation with Karamo Brown, one of the fab five, and a Georgia small town cop (and Trump supporter) that feels unscripted and unexpected and reminds us of how little actual conversation seems to be taking place in our divided country. Oh, for more car rides such as the one they take in that moment, when a chasm is bridged, if only for a few minutes. Set in the South, it is often a refreshing and affirming response to what it means to be male at a time of toxic masculinity and the overdue catharsis and pain of the #MeToo movement. Did I mention? It’s really fun.

July 1, 2019

What I’m listening to: 

The National remains my favorite band and probably 50% of my listening time is a National album or playlist. Their new album I Am Easy To Find feels like a turning point record for the band, going from the moody, outsider introspection and doubt of lead singer Matt Berninger to something that feels more adult, sophisticated, and wiser. I might have titled it Women Help The Band Grow Up. Matt is no longer the center of The National’s universe and he frequently cedes the mic to the many women who accompany and often lead on the long, their longest, album. They include Gail Ann Dorsey (who sang with Bowie for a long time), who is amazing, and a number of the songs were written by Carin Besser, Berninger’s wife. I especially love the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, the arrangements, and the sheer complexity and coherence of the work. It still amazes me when I meet someone who does not know The National. My heart breaks for them just a little.

What I’m reading: 

Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls is a retelling of Homer’s Iliad through the lens of a captive Trojan queen, Briseis. As a reviewer in The Atlantic writes, it answers the question “What does war mean to women?” We know the answer and it has always been true, whether it is the casual and assumed rape of captive women in this ancient war story or the use of rape in modern day Congo, Syria, or any other conflict zone. Yet literature almost never gives voice to the women – almost always minor characters at best — and their unspeakable suffering. Barker does it here for Briseis, for Hector’s wife Andromache, and for the other women who understand that the death of their men is tragedy, but what they then endure is worse. Think of it ancient literature having its own #MeToo moment. The NY Times’ Geraldine Brooks did not much like the novel. I did. Very much.

What I’m watching: 

The BBC-HBO limited series Years and Years is breathtaking, scary, and absolutely familiar. It’s as if Black Mirrorand Children of Men had a baby and it precisely captures the zeitgeist, the current sense that the world is spinning out of control and things are coming at us too fast. It is a near future (Trump has been re-elected and Brexit has occurred finally)…not dystopia exactly, but damn close. The closing scene of last week’s first episode (there are 6 episodes and it’s on every Monday) shows nuclear war breaking out between China and the U.S. Yikes! The scope of this show is wide and there is a big, baggy feel to it – but I love the ambition even if I’m not looking forward to the nightmares.

May 19, 2019

What I’m listening to: 

I usually go to music here, but I was really moved by this podcast of a Davis Brooks talk at the Commonwealth Club in Silicon Valley: https://www.commonwealthclub.org/events/archive/podcast/david-brooks-quest-moral-life.  While I have long found myself distant from his political stance, he has come through a dark night of the soul and emerged with a wonderful clarity about calling, community, and not happiness (that most superficial of goals), but fulfillment and meaning, found in community and human kinship of many kinds. I immediately sent it to my kids.

What I’m reading: 

Susan Orlean’s wonderful The Library Book, a love song to libraries told through the story of the LA Central Library.  It brought back cherished memories of my many hours in beloved libraries — as a kid in the Waltham Public Library, a high schooler in the Farber Library at Brandeis (Lil Farber years later became a mentor of mine), and the cathedral-like Bapst Library at BC when I was a graduate student. Yes, I was a nerd. This is a love song to books certainly, but a reminder that libraries are so, so much more.  It is a reminder that libraries are less about a place or being a repository of information and, like America at its best, an idea and ideal. By the way, oh to write like her.

What I’m watching: 

What else? Game of Thrones, like any sensible human being. This last season is disappointing in many ways and the drop off in the writing post George R.R. Martin is as clear as was the drop off in the post-Sorkin West Wing. I would be willing to bet that if Martin has been writing the last season, Sansa and Tyrion would have committed suicide in the crypt. That said, we fans are deeply invested and even the flaws are giving us so much to discuss and debate. In that sense, the real gift of this last season is the enjoyment between episodes, like the old pre-streaming days when we all arrived at work after the latest episode of the Sopranos to discuss what we had all seen the night before. I will say this, the last two episodes — full of battle and gore – have been visually stunning. Whether the torches of the Dothraki being extinguished in the distance or Arya riding through rubble and flame on a white horse, rarely has the series ascended to such visual grandeur.

March 28, 2019

What I’m listening to: 

There is a lovely piece played in a scene from A Place Called Home that I tracked down. It’s Erik Satie’s 3 Gymnopédies: Gymnopédie No. 1, played by the wonderful pianist Klára Körmendi. Satie composed this piece in 1888 and it was considered avant-garde and anti-Romantic. It’s minimalism and bit of dissonance sound fresh and contemporary to my ears and while not a huge Classical music fan, I’ve fallen in love with the Körmendi playlist on Spotify. When you need an alternative to hours of Cardi B.

What I’m reading: 

Just finished Esi Edugyan’s 2018 novel Washington Black. Starting on a slave plantation in Barbados, it is a picaresque novel that has elements of Jules Verne, Moby Dick, Frankenstein, and Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad. Yes, it strains credulity and there are moments of “huh?”, but I loved it (disclosure: I was in the minority among my fellow book club members) and the first third is a searing depiction of slavery. It’s audacious, sprawling (from Barbados to the Arctic to London to Africa), and the writing, especially about nature, luminous. 

What I’m watching: 

A soap opera. Yes, I’d like to pretend it’s something else, but we are 31 episodes into the Australian drama A Place Called Home and we are so, so addicted. Like “It’s  AM, but can’t we watch just one more episode?” addicted. Despite all the secrets, cliff hangers, intrigue, and “did that just happen?” moments, the core ingredients of any good soap opera, APCH has superb acting, real heft in terms of subject matter (including homophobia, anti-Semitism, sexual assault, and class), touches of our beloved Downton Abbey, and great cars. Beware. If you start, you won’t stop.

February 11, 2019

What I’m listening to:

Raphael Saadiq has been around for quite a while, as a musician, writer, and producer. He’s new to me and I love his old school R&B sound. Like Leon Bridges, he brings a contemporary freshness to the genre, sounding like a young Stevie Wonder (listen to “You’re The One That I Like”). Rock and Roll may be largely dead, but R&B persists – maybe because the former was derivative of the latter and never as good (and I say that as a Rock and Roll fan). I’m embarrassed to only have discovered Saadiq so late in his career, but it’s a delight to have done so.

What I’m reading:

Just finished Marilynne Robinson’s Home, part of her trilogy that includes the Pulitzer Prize winning first novel, Gilead, and the book after Home, Lila. Robinson is often described as a Christian writer, but not in a conventional sense. In this case, she gives us a modern version of the prodigal son and tells the story of what comes after he is welcomed back home. It’s not pretty. Robinson is a self-described Calvinist, thus character begets fate in Robinson’s world view and redemption is at best a question. There is something of Faulkner in her work (I am much taken with his famous “The past is never past” quote after a week in the deep South), her style is masterful, and like Faulkner, she builds with these three novels a whole universe in the small town of Gilead. Start with Gilead to better enjoy Home.

What I’m watching:

Sex Education was the most fun series we’ve seen in ages and we binged watched it on Netflix. A British homage to John Hughes films like The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and Pretty in Pink, it feels like a mash up of American and British high schools. Focusing on the relationship of Maeve, the smart bad girl, and Otis, the virginal and awkward son of a sex therapist (played with brilliance by Gillian Anderson), it is laugh aloud funny and also evolves into more substance and depth (the abortion episode is genius). The sex scenes are somehow raunchy and charming and inoffensive at the same time and while ostensibly about teenagers (it feels like it is explaining contemporary teens to adults in many ways), the adults are compelling in their good and bad ways. It has been renewed for a second season, which is a gift.

January 3, 2019

What I’m listening to:

My listening choices usually refer to music, but this time I’m going with Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History podcast on genius and the song Hallelujah. It tells the story of Leonard Cohen’s much-covered song Hallelujah and uses it as a lens on kinds of genius and creativity. Along the way, he brings in Picasso and Cézanne, Elvis Costello, and more. Gladwell is a good storyteller and if you love pop music, as I do, and Hallelujah, as I do (and you should), you’ll enjoy this podcast. We tend to celebrate the genius who seems inspired in the moment, creating new work like lightning strikes, but this podcast has me appreciating incremental creativity in a new way. It’s compelling and fun at the same time.

What I’m reading:

Just read Clay Christensen’s new book, The Prosperity Paradox: How Innovation Can Lift Nations Out of Poverty. This was an advance copy, so soon available. Clay is an old friend and a huge influence on how we have grown SNHU and our approach to innovation. This book is so compelling, because we know attempts at development have so often been a failure and it is often puzzling to understand why some countries with desperate poverty and huge challenges somehow come to thrive (think S. Korea, Singapore, 19th C. America), while others languish. Clay offers a fresh way of thinking about development through the lens of his research on innovation and it is compelling. I bet this book gets a lot of attention, as most of his work does. I also suspect that many in the development community will hate it, as it calls into question the approach and enormous investments we have made in an attempt to lift countries out of poverty. A provocative read and, as always, Clay is a good storyteller.

What I’m watching:

Just watched Leave No Trace and should have guessed that it was directed by Debra Granik. She did Winter’s Bone, the extraordinary movie that launched Jennifer Lawrence’s career. Similarly, this movie features an amazing young actor, Thomasin McKenzie, and visits lives lived on the margins. In this case, a veteran suffering PTSD, and his 13-year-old daughter. The movie is patient, is visually lush, and justly earned 100% on Rotten Tomatoes (I have a rule to never watch anything under 82%). Everything in this film is under control and beautifully understated (aside from the visuals) – confident acting, confident directing, and so humane. I love the lack of flashbacks, the lack of sensationalism – the movie trusts the viewer, rare in this age of bombast. A lovely film.

December 4, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Spending a week in New Zealand, we had endless laughs listening to the Kiwi band, Flight of the Conchords. Lots of comedic bands are funny, but the music is only okay or worse. These guys are funny – hysterical really – and the music is great. They have an uncanny ability to parody almost any style. In both New Zealand and Australia, we found a wry sense of humor that was just delightful and no better captured than with this duo. You don’t have to be in New Zealand to enjoy them.

What I’m reading:

I don’t often reread. For two reasons: A) I have so many books on my “still to be read” pile that it seems daunting to also rereadbooks I loved before, and B) it’s because I loved them once that I’m a little afraid to read them again. That said, I was recently asked to list my favorite book of all time and I answered Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. But I don’t really know if that’s still true (and it’s an impossible question anyway – favorite book? On what day? In what mood?), so I’m rereading it and it feels like being with an old friend. It has one of my very favorite scenes ever: the card game between Levin and Kitty that leads to the proposal and his joyous walking the streets all night.

What I’m watching:

Blindspotting is billed as a buddy-comedy. Wow does that undersell it and the drama is often gripping. I loved Daveed Diggs in Hamilton, didn’t like his character in Black-ish, and think he is transcendent in this film he co-wrote with Rafael Casal, his co-star.  The film is a love song to Oakland in many ways, but also a gut-wrenching indictment of police brutality, systemic racism and bias, and gentrification. The film has the freshness and raw visceral impact of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing. A great soundtrack, genre mixing, and energy make it one of my favorite movies of 2018.

October 15, 2018 

What I’m listening to:

We had the opportunity to see our favorite band, The National, live in Dallas two weeks ago. Just after watching Mistaken for Strangers, the documentary sort of about the band. So we’ve spent a lot of time going back into their earlier work, listening to songs we don’t know well, and reaffirming that their musicality, smarts, and sound are both original and astoundingly good. They did not disappoint in concert and it is a good thing their tour ended, as we might just spend all of our time and money following them around. Matt Berninger is a genius and his lead vocals kill me (and because they are in my range, I can actually sing along!). Their arrangements are profoundly good and go right to whatever brain/heart wiring that pulls one in and doesn’t let them go.

What I’m reading:

Who is Richard Powers and why have I only discovered him now, with his 12th book? Overstory is profoundly good, a book that is essential and powerful and makes me look at my everyday world in new ways. In short, a dizzying example of how powerful can be narrative in the hands of a master storyteller. I hesitate to say it’s the best environmental novel I’ve ever read (it is), because that would put this book in a category. It is surely about the natural world, but it is as much about we humans. It’s monumental and elegiac and wondrous at all once. Cancel your day’s schedule and read it now. Then plant a tree. A lot of them.

What I’m watching:

Bo Burnham wrote and directed Eighth Grade and Elsie Fisher is nothing less than amazing as its star (what’s with these new child actors; see Florida Project). It’s funny and painful and touching. It’s also the single best film treatment that I have seen of what it means to grow up in a social media shaped world. It’s a reminder that growing up is hard. Maybe harder now in a world of relentless, layered digital pressure to curate perfect lives that are far removed from the natural messy worlds and selves we actually inhabit. It’s a well-deserved 98% on Rotten Tomatoes and I wonder who dinged it for the missing 2%.

September 7, 2018

What I’m listening to:

With a cover pointing back to the Beastie Boys’ 1986 Licensed to Ill, Eminem’s quietly released Kamikaze is not my usual taste, but I’ve always admired him for his “all out there” willingness to be personal, to call people out, and his sheer genius with language. I thought Daveed Diggs could rap fast, but Eminem is supersonic at moments, and still finds room for melody. Love that he includes Joyner Lucas, whose “I’m Not Racist” gets added to the growing list of simply amazing music videos commenting on race in America. There are endless reasons why I am the least likely Eminem fan, but when no one is around to make fun of me, I’ll put it on again.

What I’m reading:

Lesley Blume’s Everyone Behaves Badly, which is the story behind Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and his time in 1920s Paris (oh, what a time – see Midnight in Paris if you haven’t already). Of course, Blume disabuses my romantic ideas of that time and place and everyone is sort of (or profoundly so) a jerk, especially…no spoiler here…Hemingway. That said, it is a compelling read and coming off the Henry James inspired prose of Mrs. Osmond, it made me appreciate more how groundbreaking was Hemingway’s modern prose style. Like his contemporary Picasso, he reinvented the art and it can be easy to forget, these decades later, how profound was the change and its impact. And it has bullfights.

What I’m watching:

Chloé Zhao’s The Rider is just exceptional. It’s filmed on the Pine Ridge Reservation, which provides a stunning landscape, and it feels like a classic western reinvented for our times. The main characters are played by the real-life people who inspired this narrative (but feels like a documentary) film. Brady Jandreau, playing himself really, owns the screen. It’s about manhood, honor codes, loss, and resilience – rendered in sensitive, nuanced, and heartfelt ways. It feels like it could be about large swaths of America today. Really powerful.

August 16, 2018

What I’m listening to:

In my Spotify Daily Mix was Percy Sledge’s When A Man Loves A Woman, one of the world’s greatest love songs. Go online and read the story of how the song was discovered and recorded. There are competing accounts, but Sledge said he improvised it after a bad breakup. It has that kind of aching spontaneity. It is another hit from Muscle Shoals, Alabama, one of the GREAT music hotbeds, along with Detroit, Nashville, and Memphis. Our February Board meeting is in Alabama and I may finally have to do the pilgrimage road trip to Muscle Shoals and then Memphis, dropping in for Sunday services at the church where Rev. Al Green still preaches and sings. If the music is all like this, I will be saved.

What I’m reading:

John Banville’s Mrs. Osmond, his homage to literary idol Henry James and an imagined sequel to James’ 1881 masterpiece Portrait of a Lady. Go online and read the first paragraph of Chapter 25. He is…profoundly good. Makes me want to never write again, since anything I attempt will feel like some other, lowly activity in comparison to his mastery of language, image, syntax. This is slow reading, every sentence to be savored.

What I’m watching:

I’ve always respected Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but we just watched the documentary RGB. It is over-the-top great and she is now one of my heroes. A superwoman in many ways and the documentary is really well done. There are lots of scenes of her speaking to crowds and the way young women, especially law students, look at her is touching.  And you can’t help but fall in love with her now late husband Marty. See this movie and be reminded of how important is the Law.

July 23, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Spotify’s Summer Acoustic playlist has been on repeat quite a lot. What a fun way to listen to artists new to me, including The Paper Kites, Hollow Coves, and Fleet Foxes, as well as old favorites like Leon Bridges and Jose Gonzalez. Pretty chill when dialing back to a summer pace, dining on the screen porch or reading a book.

What I’m reading:

Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy. Founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, Stevenson tells of the racial injustice (and the war on the poor our judicial system perpetuates as well) that he discovered as a young graduate from Harvard Law School and his fight to address it. It is in turn heartbreaking, enraging, and inspiring. It is also about mercy and empathy and justice that reads like a novel. Brilliant.

What I’m watching:

Fauda. We watched season one of this Israeli thriller. It was much discussed in Israel because while it focuses on an ex-special agent who comes out of retirement to track down a Palestinian terrorist, it was willing to reveal the complexity, richness, and emotions of Palestinian lives. And the occasional brutality of the Israelis. Pretty controversial stuff in Israel. Lior Raz plays Doron, the main character, and is compelling and tough and often hard to like. He’s a mess. As is the world in which he has to operate. We really liked it, and also felt guilty because while it may have been brave in its treatment of Palestinians within the Israeli context, it falls back into some tired tropes and ultimately falls short on this front.

June 11, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Like everyone else, I’m listening to Pusha T drop the mic on Drake. Okay, not really, but do I get some points for even knowing that? We all walk around with songs that immediately bring us back to a time or a place. Songs are time machines. We are coming up on Father’s Day. My own dad passed away on Father’s Day back in 1994 and I remembering dutifully getting through the wake and funeral and being strong throughout. Then, sitting alone in our kitchen, Don Henley’s The End of the Innocence came on and I lost it. When you lose a parent for the first time (most of us have two after all) we lose our innocence and in that passage, we suddenly feel adult in a new way (no matter how old we are), a longing for our own childhood, and a need to forgive and be forgiven. Listen to the lyrics and you’ll understand. As Wordsworth reminds us in In Memoriam, there are seasons to our grief and, all these years later, this song no longer hits me in the gut, but does transport me back with loving memories of my father. I’ll play it Father’s Day.

What I’m reading:

The Fifth Season, by N. K. Jemisin. I am not a reader of fantasy or sci-fi, though I understand they can be powerful vehicles for addressing the very real challenges of the world in which we actually live. I’m not sure I know of a more vivid and gripping illustration of that fact than N. K. Jemisin’s Hugo Award winning novel The Fifth Season, first in her Broken Earth trilogy. It is astounding. It is the fantasy parallel to The Underground Railroad, my favorite recent read, a depiction of subjugation, power, casual violence, and a broken world in which our hero(s) struggle, suffer mightily, and still, somehow, give us hope. It is a tour de force book. How can someone be this good a writer? The first 30 pages pained me (always with this genre, one must learn a new, constructed world, and all of its operating physics and systems of order), and then I could not put it down. I panicked as I neared the end, not wanting to finish the book, and quickly ordered the Obelisk Gate, the second novel in the trilogy, and I can tell you now that I’ll be spending some goodly portion of my weekend in Jemisin’s other world.

What I’m watching:

The NBA Finals and perhaps the best basketball player of this generation. I’ve come to deeply respect LeBron James as a person, a force for social good, and now as an extraordinary player at the peak of his powers. His superhuman play during the NBA playoffs now ranks with the all-time greats, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, MJ, Kobe, and the demi-god that was Bill Russell. That his Cavs lost in a 4-game sweep is no surprise. It was a mediocre team being carried on the wide shoulders of James (and matched against one of the greatest teams ever, the Warriors, and the Harry Potter of basketball, Steph Curry) and, in some strange way, his greatness is amplified by the contrast with the rest of his team. It was a great run.

May 24, 2018

What I’m listening to:

I’ve always liked Alicia Keys and admired her social activism, but I am hooked on her last album Here. This feels like an album finally commensurate with her anger, activism, hope, and grit. More R&B and Hip Hop than is typical for her, I think this album moves into an echelon inhabited by a Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On or Beyonce’s Formation. Social activism and outrage rarely make great novels, but they often fuel great popular music. Here is a terrific example.

What I’m reading:

Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad may be close to a flawless novel. Winner of the 2017 Pulitzer, it chronicles the lives of two runaway slaves, Cora and Caeser, as they try to escape the hell of plantation life in Georgia.  It is an often searing novel and Cora is one of the great heroes of American literature. I would make this mandatory reading in every high school in America, especially in light of the absurd revisionist narratives of “happy and well cared for” slaves. This is a genuinely great novel, one of the best I’ve read, the magical realism and conflating of time periods lifts it to another realm of social commentary, relevance, and a blazing indictment of America’s Original Sin, for which we remain unabsolved.

What I’m watching:

I thought I knew about The Pentagon Papers, but The Post, a real-life political thriller from Steven Spielberg taught me a lot, features some of our greatest actors, and is so timely given the assault on our democratic institutions and with a presidency out of control. It is a reminder that a free and fearless press is a powerful part of our democracy, always among the first targets of despots everywhere. The story revolves around the legendary Post owner and D.C. doyenne, Katharine Graham. I had the opportunity to see her son, Don Graham, right after he saw the film, and he raved about Meryl Streep’s portrayal of his mother. Liked it a lot more than I expected.

April 27, 2018

What I’m listening to:

I mentioned John Prine in a recent post and then on the heels of that mention, he has released a new album, The Tree of Forgiveness, his first new album in ten years. Prine is beloved by other singer songwriters and often praised by the inscrutable God that is Bob Dylan.  Indeed, Prine was frequently said to be the “next Bob Dylan” in the early part of his career, though he instead carved out his own respectable career and voice, if never with the dizzying success of Dylan. The new album reflects a man in his 70s, a cancer survivor, who reflects on life and its end, but with the good humor and empathy that are hallmarks of Prine’s music. “When I Get To Heaven” is a rollicking, fun vision of what comes next and a pure delight. A charming, warm, and often terrific album.

What I’m reading:

I recently read Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko, on many people’s Top Ten lists for last year and for good reason. It is sprawling, multi-generational, and based in the world of Japanese occupied Korea and then in the Korean immigrant’s world of Oaska, so our key characters become “tweeners,” accepted in neither world. It’s often unspeakably sad, and yet there is resiliency and love. There is also intimacy, despite the time and geographic span of the novel. It’s breathtakingly good and like all good novels, transporting.

What I’m watching:

I adore Guillermo del Toro’s 2006 film, Pan’s Labyrinth, and while I’m not sure his Shape of Water is better, it is a worthy follow up to the earlier masterpiece (and more of a commercial success). Lots of critics dislike the film, but I’m okay with a simple retelling of a Beauty and the Beast love story, as predictable as it might be. The acting is terrific, it is visually stunning, and there are layers of pain as well as social and political commentary (the setting is the US during the Cold War) and, no real spoiler here, the real monsters are humans, the military officer who sees over the captured aquatic creature. It is hauntingly beautiful and its depiction of hatred to those who are different or “other” is painfully resonant with the time in which we live. Put this on your “must see” list.

March 18, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Sitting on a plane for hours (and many more to go; geez, Australia is far away) is a great opportunity to listen to new music and to revisit old favorites. This time, it is Lucy Dacus and her album Historians, the new sophomore release from a 22-year old indie artist that writes with relatable, real-life lyrics. Just on a second listen and while she insists this isn’t a break up record (as we know, 50% of all great songs are break up songs), it is full of loss and pain. Worth the listen so far. For the way back machine, it’s John Prine and In Spite of Ourselves (that title track is one of the great love songs of all time), a collection of duets with some of his “favorite girl singers” as he once described them. I have a crush on Iris Dement (for a really righteously angry song try her Wasteland of the Free), but there is also EmmyLou Harris, the incomparable Dolores Keane, and Lucinda Williams. Very different albums, both wonderful.

What I’m reading:

Jane Mayer’s New Yorker piece on Christopher Steele presents little that is new, but she pulls it together in a terrific and coherent whole that is illuminating and troubling at the same time. Not only for what is happening, but for the complicity of the far right in trying to discredit that which should be setting off alarm bells everywhere. Bob Mueller may be the most important defender of the democracy at this time. A must read.

What I’m watching:

Homeland is killing it this season and is prescient, hauntingly so. Russian election interference, a Bannon-style hate radio demagogue, alienated and gun toting militia types, and a president out of control. It’s fabulous, even if it feels awfully close to the evening news. 

March 8, 2018

What I’m listening to:

We have a family challenge to compile our Top 100 songs. It is painful. Only 100? No more than three songs by one artist? Wait, why is M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes” on my list? Should it just be The Clash from whom she samples? Can I admit to guilty pleasure songs? Hey, it’s my list and I can put anything I want on it. So I’m listening to the list while I work and the song playing right now is Tom Petty’s “The Wild One, Forever,” a B-side single that was never a hit and that remains my favorite Petty song. Also, “Evangeline” by Los Lobos. It evokes a night many years ago, with friends at Pearl Street in Northampton, MA, when everyone danced well past 1AM in a hot, sweaty, packed club and the band was a revelation. Maybe the best music night of our lives and a reminder that one’s 100 Favorite Songs list is as much about what you were doing and where you were in your life when those songs were playing as it is about the music. It’s not a list. It’s a soundtrack for this journey.

What I’m reading:

Patricia Lockwood’s Priestdaddy was in the NY Times top ten books of 2017 list and it is easy to see why. Lockwood brings remarkable and often surprising imagery, metaphor, and language to her prose memoir and it actually threw me off at first. It then all became clear when someone told me she is a poet. The book is laugh aloud funny, which masks (or makes safer anyway) some pretty dark territory. Anyone who grew up Catholic, whether lapsed or not, will resonate with her story. She can’t resist a bawdy anecdote and her family provides some of the most memorable characters possible, especially her father, her sister, and her mother, who I came to adore. Best thing I’ve read in ages.

What I’m watching:

The Florida Project, a profoundly good movie on so many levels. Start with the central character, six-year old (at the time of the filming) Brooklynn Prince, who owns – I mean really owns – the screen. This is pure acting genius and at that age? Astounding. Almost as astounding is Bria Vinaite, who plays her mother. She was discovered on Instagram and had never acted before this role, which she did with just three weeks of acting lessons. She is utterly convincing and the tension between the child’s absolute wonder and joy in the world with her mother’s struggle to provide, to be a mother, is heartwarming and heartbreaking all at once. Willem Dafoe rightly received an Oscar nomination for his supporting role. This is a terrific movie.

February 12, 2018

What I’m listening to:

So, I have a lot of friends of age (I know you’re thinking 40s, but I just turned 60) who are frozen in whatever era of music they enjoyed in college or maybe even in their thirties. There are lots of times when I reach back into the catalog, since music is one of those really powerful and transporting senses that can take you through time (smell is the other one, though often underappreciated for that power). Hell, I just bought a turntable and now spending time in vintage vinyl shops. But I’m trying to take a lesson from Pat, who revels in new music and can as easily talk about North African rap music and the latest National album as Meet the Beatles, her first ever album. So, I’ve been listening to Kendrick Lamar’s Grammy winning Damn. While it may not be the first thing I’ll reach for on a winter night in Maine, by the fire, I was taken with it. It’s layered, political, and weirdly sensitive and misogynist at the same time, and it feels fresh and authentic and smart at the same time, with music that often pulled me from what I was doing. In short, everything music should do. I’m not a bit cooler for listening to Damn, but when I followed it with Steely Dan, I felt like I was listening to Lawrence Welk. A good sign, I think.

What I’m reading:

I am reading Walter Isaacson’s new biography of Leonardo da Vinci. I’m not usually a reader of biographies, but I’ve always been taken with Leonardo. Isaacson does not disappoint (does he ever?), and his subject is at once more human and accessible and more awe-inspiring in Isaacson’s capable hands. Gay, left-handed, vegetarian, incapable of finishing things, a wonderful conversationalist, kind, and perhaps the most relentlessly curious human being who has ever lived. Like his biographies of Steve Jobs and Albert Einstein, Isaacson’s project here is to show that genius lives at the intersection of science and art, of rationality and creativity. Highly recommend it.

What I’m watching:

We watched the This Is Us post-Super Bowl episode, the one where Jack finally buys the farm. I really want to hate this show. It is melodramatic and manipulative, with characters that mostly never change or grow, and it hooks me every damn time we watch it. The episode last Sunday was a tear jerker, a double whammy intended to render into a blubbering, tissue-crumbling pathetic mess anyone who has lost a parent or who is a parent. Sterling K. Brown, Ron Cephas Jones, the surprising Mandy Moore, and Milo Ventimiglia are hard not to love and last season’s episode that had only Brown and Cephas going to Memphis was the show at its best (they are by far the two best actors). Last week was the show at its best worst. In other words, I want to hate it, but I love it. If you haven’t seen it, don’t binge watch it. You’ll need therapy and insulin.

January 15, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Drive-By Truckers. Chris Stapleton has me on an unusual (for me) country theme and I discovered these guys to my great delight. They’ve been around, with some 11 albums, but the newest one is fascinating. It’s a deep dive into Southern alienation and the white working-class world often associated with our current president. I admire the willingness to lay bare, in kick ass rock songs, the complexities and pain at work among people we too quickly place into overly simple categories. These guys are brave, bold, and thoughtful as hell, while producing songs I didn’t expect to like, but that I keep playing. And they are coming to NH.

What I’m reading:

A textual analog to Drive-By Truckers by Chris Stapleton in many ways is Tony Horowitz’s 1998 Pulitzer Prize winning Confederates in the Attic. Ostensibly about the Civil War and the South’s ongoing attachment to it, it is prescient and speaks eloquently to the times in which we live (where every southern state but Virginia voted for President Trump). Often hilarious, it too surfaces complexities and nuance that escape a more recent, and widely acclaimed, book like Hillbilly Elegy. As a Civil War fan, it was also astonishing in many instances, especially when it blows apart long-held “truths” about the war, such as the degree to which Sherman burned down the south (he did not). Like D-B Truckers, Horowitz loves the South and the people he encounters, even as he grapples with its myths of victimhood and exceptionalism (and racism, which may be no more than the racism in the north, but of a different kind). Everyone should read this book and I’m embarrassed I’m so late to it.

What I’m watching:

David Letterman has a new Netflix show called “My Next Guest Needs No Introduction” and we watched the first episode, in which Letterman interviewed Barack Obama. It was extraordinary (if you don’t have Netflix, get it just to watch this show); not only because we were reminded of Obama’s smarts, grace, and humanity (and humor), but because we saw a side of Letterman we didn’t know existed. His personal reflections on Selma were raw and powerful, almost painful. He will do five more episodes with “extraordinary individuals” and if they are anything like the first, this might be the very best work of his career and one of the best things on television.

December 22, 2017

What I’m reading:

Just finished Sunjeev Sahota’s Year of the Runaways, a painful inside look at the plight of illegal Indian immigrant workers in Britain. It was shortlisted for 2015 Man Booker Prize and its transporting, often to a dark and painful universe, and it is impossible not to think about the American version of this story and the terrible way we treat the undocumented in our own country, especially now.

What I’m watching:

Season II of The Crown is even better than Season I. Elizabeth’s character is becoming more three-dimensional, the modern world is catching up with tradition-bound Britain, and Cold War politics offer more context and tension than we saw in Season I. Claire Foy, in her last season, is just terrific – one arched eye brow can send a message.

What I’m listening to:

A lot of Christmas music, but needing a break from the schmaltz, I’ve discovered Over the Rhine and their Christmas album, Snow Angels. God, these guys are good.

November 14, 2017

What I’m watching:

Guiltily, I watch the Patriots play every weekend, often building my schedule and plans around seeing the game. Why the guilt? I don’t know how morally defensible is football anymore, as we now know the severe damage it does to the players. We can’t pretend it’s all okay anymore. Is this our version of late decadent Rome, watching mostly young Black men take a terrible toll on each other for our mere entertainment?

What I’m reading:

Recently finished J.G. Ballard’s 2000 novel Super-Cannes, a powerful depiction of a corporate-tech ex-pat community taken over by a kind of psychopathology, in which all social norms and responsibilities are surrendered to residents of the new world community. Kept thinking about Silicon Valley when reading it. Pretty dark, dystopian view of the modern world and centered around a mass killing, troublingly prescient.

What I’m listening to:

Was never really a Lorde fan, only knowing her catchy (and smarter than you might first guess) pop hit “Royals” from her debut album. But her new album, Melodrama, is terrific and it doesn’t feel quite right to call this “pop.” There is something way more substantial going on with Lorde and I can see why many critics put this album at the top of their Best in 2017 list. Count me in as a huge fan.

November 3, 2017

What I’m reading: Just finished Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere, her breathtakingly good second novel. How is someone so young so wise? Her writing is near perfection and I read the book in two days, setting my alarm for 4:30AM so I could finish it before work.

What I’m watching: We just binge watched season two of Stranger Things and it was worth it just to watch Millie Bobbie Brown, the transcendent young actor who plays Eleven. The series is a delightful mash up of every great eighties horror genre you can imagine and while pretty dark, an absolute joy to watch.

What I’m listening to: I’m not a lover of country music (to say the least), but I love Chris Stapleton. His “The Last Thing I Needed, First Thing This Morning” is heartbreakingly good and reminds me of the old school country that played in my house as a kid. He has a new album and I can’t wait, but his From A Room: Volume 1 is on repeat for now.

September 26, 2017

What I’m reading:

Just finished George Saunder’s Lincoln in the Bardo. It took me a while to accept its cadence and sheer weirdness, but loved it in the end. A painful meditation on loss and grief, and a genuinely beautiful exploration of the intersection of life and death, the difficulty of letting go of what was, good and bad, and what never came to be.

What I’m watching:

HBO’s The Deuce. Times Square and the beginning of the porn industry in the 1970s, the setting made me wonder if this was really something I’d want to see. But David Simon is the writer and I’d read a menu if he wrote it. It does not disappoint so far and there is nothing prurient about it.

What I’m listening to:

The National’s new album Sleep Well Beast. I love this band. The opening piano notes of the first song, “Nobody Else Will Be There,” seize me & I’m reminded that no one else in music today matches their arrangement & musicianship. I’m adding “Born to Beg,” “Slow Show,” “I Need My Girl,” and “Runaway” to my list of favorite love songs.

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The Stewardship of Water in Islam

New Post has been published on http://www.truth-seeker.info/featured/the-stewardship-of-water-in-islam/

The Stewardship of Water in Islam

By Sadullah Khan

“Allah surely loves not those who transgress the bounds of what is right. Do not cause any disruption on earth after it has been so well ordered.” [Al-A`raf 7:55-56]

Awakening a Higher Consciousness

Among the primary purposes of the Qur’an is to awaken in us the higher consciousness of our manifold relations with Allah and the universe. The Qur’anic paradigm regards; not only nature, but all universe as the creation of Allah (rabbul ‘aalimeen / Creator of all existing things). The relationship of everything as the creation of the Creator leads to awareness that …

we are part of a larger single unit/system (‘aalam)

all existence is facilitated by the Creator (concept of rububiyyah)

iii. our interaction with everything is bound by our interconnectedness to the Divine (makhluqaat)… that all our actions need to take into consideration both huquq-Allah (duty owed to Creator) and huquq al-‘Ibad (duty owed to creation) as well as to imbue ourselves with characteristics of the Divine implying that we synthesizes the values of rahmah/compassion, ‘adl/justice, ihsan/benevolence, ‘aql/reason, hikmah/wisdom; as part of character and behavior.

Human Stewardship

As people of faith, we gather from the Qur’an and Prophetic tradition that …

We are of the earth, living on the earth.

“He brought you into being out of the earth and made you thrive thereon.” [Hud 11: 61]

As the human community is part of nature so too do other creations form communities at their respective levels [Al-An`am 6:38]. The Prophet also reminded us … “all creation are part of God’s dependents; and God loves most those who are best to his universal dependents”

There is a degree of orderliness in creation of Creator.

“He has made everything to the measure of excellence” [An-Naml 27:88]

Humanity should behave in such a way that would maintain the balance that exists within the environment. Rather, we should retrieve the balance that has existed before we have caused, collectively, many ecological disasters:

“And the earth We have spread out; set thereon mountains firm and immovable; and produced therein all kinds of things in due balance.” [Al-Hijr 15:19]

The human being, in the Islamic world-view [Al-Baqarah 2:30] is considered a khalifah / vicegerent the world is green and delightful and Allah has put you in charge of the world and is observing carefully how you deal with it [Prophet Muhammad (pbuh).

This should lead us to realize that there is an organic connection between creation and function, between proper knowledge and right behavior, between awareness and responsibility.

In the capacity as a vicegerent/khalifah, the human being is perceived as the trustee of the earth; is not supposed to cause corruption in any form on earth (i.e. the environment). It is a amaanah/trust, requiring awareness of accountability. Vicegerency as a test is found in the following verse:

“It is He Who has made you (His) vicegerents, inheritors of the earth: He has raised you in ranks, some above others: that He may try you in the gifts He has given you: for your Lord is quick in punishment: yet He is indeed Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful.” [Al-An`am 6:165]

That we are accountable each for whatever is under our care.

The earth is made available for human use, without abuse or misuse. Subjected/ of service to humanity is whatever is in the celestial spheres and the earth; surely, in all these, there are signs for those who reflect [Al-Jathiyah 45:13]. We deduce from the above-mentioned Qur’anic principles that “although the various components of the natural environment serve humanity as one of their functions, this does not imply that human use is the sole reason for their creation”

Liquid of Life

In this week there was a deliberate global focus on water since 8 years ago, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) designated 22 March (of each year) as the World Day for Water

Our Earth seems to be unique among the other known celestial bodies. It has water, which covers three-fourths of its surface and constitutes 60-70 % of the living world. Life will cease on earth in the absence of water. At a micro level, the human body consisting of more than 70% of water. Water is involved in all bodily functions: digestion, assimilation, elimination, respiration, maintaining temperature (homeostasis) and the strength of all bodily structures. Water regenerates and is redistributed through evaporation, making it seem endlessly renewable.

Survival at Risk

Only 1% of the world’s water is usable to us. About 97% is salty sea water, and 2% is frozen in glaciers and polar ice caps. Thus that 1% of the world’s water supply is a precious commodity necessary for our survival. The UN World Water Development Report indicates:

Currently, over one billion people lack a reliable supply of water

2.4 billion people – or just under half the world’s population – have no adequate water supply for daily needs.

Human pollution is one of the main factors seriously undermining the quality and availability of freshwater, says the report. About 2 million tons of waste are dumped every day into rivers, lakes and streams. One gallon of wastewater pollutes about eight gallons of freshwater.

As a result, more than 2.2 million people die each year from diseases owing to contaminated drinking water and poor sanitation.

Every day around 6,000 people, mainly children under the age of five, die from water-related diseases.

The World Resources Institute predicts that by 2025, at least 3.5 billion people, or nearly 60 percent of the world’s population, will face water scarcity.

Much of the world gets by on 2.5 gallons of water per day. The average American uses 400 gallons per day, 30% of which is for outdoor uses and half for watering lawns- 7 billion gallons per day. (EPA)

Water in Islam

The Deen of Islam ascribes the most revered qualities to water as a life-giving, sustaining, and purifying resource. It is the origin of all life on earth, the substance from which God created humankind

“And He it is who out of this [very] water has created man, and has endowed him with [the consciousness of] descent and marriage-tie: for thy Sustainer is ever infinite in His power.” [Al-Furqan 25:54]

The Qur’an emphasizes the centrality of water to life and living itself:

“We made from water every living thing” [Al-Anbiya’ 21:30].

The water of rain, rivers, and fountains run through the pages of the Qur’an to symbolize Allah’s benevolence:

“It is Allah who sends forth the winds as a glad tiding of His coming grace; and causes pure water to descend from the skies [Al-Furqan 25:48].

The oft-repeated words of the Prophet “cleanliness is half of faith,” reveal not only the central importance of purity and cleanliness but also the essential role water plays in Islam. Even the word Shari`ah itself is closely related to water. It is included in early Arab dictionaries and originally meant “the place from which one descends to water.” Before the advent of Islam in Arabia, the shari`ah was, in fact, a series of rules about water use: the shir`at al-maa’ were the permits that gave right to drinking water.

The Qur’anic metaphors in which water is used to symbolize Paradise, righteousness, and Allah’s mercy are quite frequent. From the numerous Qur’anic references to cooling

“… rivers, fresh rain, and fountains of pure, flavored drinking water in Paradise” [Muhammad 47:15]

“Faces that Day will be shining well-pleased with [the fruit of] their striving in a garden sublime, wherein there will be no nonsensical talk; Countless springs will flow therein” [Al-Haqqah 69:21-25]

We can deduce that water is an essential component of the landscape of the gardens of Paradise. It flows beneath and through them, bringing coolness, sustenance and beauty.

Our Collective Task

“Surely, in the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the succession of night and day: and in the ships that speed on the sea with what is useful to humans: and in the waters which Allah causes to pour from the sky, giving life thereby to the earth after it had been lifeless, and facilitating all manner of living creatures to sustain themselves and multiply thereon: and in the change of the winds, and the clouds that run their appointed courses: [in all this] there are messages indeed for people who use their reason.” [Al-Baqarah 2:164]

We are commanded in the Qur’an not to cause disruption /corruption/ mischief/chaos on earth after it has been so well ordered/organized [Al-A`raf 7:56 and Al-Mulk 67: 3-4]. Wise ones have said that we abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect. Native Indian Chief Seattle of the Duwamish Tribe said: “Whatever befalls the Earth – befalls the sons of the Earth. Man did not weave the web of life – he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.” There is an age-old native Indian saying: “Reflect on the fact that the land belongs to a vast family of which many are dead, few are living, and countless numbers are still unborn.”

The Prophet …

advised the Muslim armies that even when in enemy territory, not to pollute the water performed ablution washing each part no more than three times] and said: “Whoever increases more than three he does excess and wrong.” This in keeping with the Qur’anic injunction, so necessary for water preservation

“…eat and drink but do not waste: verily, Allah does not love the wasteful!” [Al-A`raf 7:31]

———-

Sadullah Khan completed the memorization of the Qur’an and furthered his studies in Law in South Africa, Journalism in England and Islamic Studies in Egypt. As a motivational speaker, he addresses issues of spirituality, empowerment. He is the author of the book “Dimensions of the Qur’an” and translator of “Message For The Seekers Of Guidance”. He has served in several roles in Universities and Islamic Centers in Southern California and is currently involved with Impower Development International based in South Africa.

[cleargentlemenllama-blog]

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Important Info from TWAB (8/9/18)

One topic that we’ve seen a lot of questions about is how we’ll migrate from old weapon mods to new weapon mods. Starting on August 28, your current mods will be deprecated, and your inventory will tell you that you can safely discard them for materials and parts. On September 4, the Gunsmith’s inventory will be dedicated to new Forsaken mods.

Between now and the preload on August 28, use your Year 1 mods to lock in the elemental damage type you want for your Year 1 weapons. They will retain that damage type after the mod deprecation. On August 28, the old mod slot will go away, and you will no longer be able to insert any mods into Year 1 gear or change the elemental damage type. Some weapons will be moving to the Kinetic Slot and will not retain elemental damage regardless of what mod you had applied. The IKELOS Sniper Rifle and Shotgun will be locked to Solar. Here are the Legendary weapons that will be moving to Kinetic:

Baligant

Shepherd’s Watch

Hawthorne’s Field-Forged Shotgun

Alone as a God

Perfect Paradox

The Frigid Jackal

Silicon Neuroma

How to Become Legend in Year 2

Weapon tuning and systems aren’t the only things that are changing in Forsaken. When your next journey begins, you’ll also discover new ways to earn rewards and become more powerful. The Investment Team can give you a sense for what’s coming.

Investment Team: Here are our high-level goals for progression and economy in Season 4:

We want to bring back the days when you are impressed when you see someone at max Power in the Tower.

The experience of leveling and then powering up should be meaningful.

Players should have a sense of discovery when earning rewards from different activities.

When players accomplish something difficult, the rewards should be special or unique.

Not all of the sources of Power in a week should be apparent on the Director.

Acquisition of Power

In Year 1, an activity such as the raid would have an absolute range of Power that it could generate. Rewards would grant only a small difference in Power level, even if you were overcoming the challenge while under-leveled. In Forsaken, we are scaling the Power production of all content by the difficulty of that content. If you manage to beat the raid while 40 Power under the recommended level, you should expect to receive more potent rewards. When players earn powerful rewards, these items should never scale down to where they do not give an increase in Power. Even if your Power is 100 over an activity’s recommended level, it should still grant a reward at least one Power level above your current average. This means that players should still benefit when grouping with teammates who haven’t accomplished as much as they have.

We’ve also created multiple new sources of Power for powerful rewards that refresh on a different cadence than the weekly reset. The goal is to provide more to do for the players who want to play a variety of activities. That said, not every reward you find in the wild will be a powerful upgrade. We don’t want to spoil the entire journey to max Power, so we’ll be leaving it in the hands of the players to discover the best ways to reach endgame and beyond when Forsaken is released.

As a final note on Power, we’ve heard a lot of feedback concerning Exotics. To make these rewards feel more useful, whenever you receive an Exotic reward in Forsaken, it will always be at or above your Guardian’s Power.

Milestones

The Milestone tray has been revamped in Forsaken, and will now specifically show the most important, nonrepeatable quests for every player of Destiny 2. The campaign quests are a good example of this. Meanwhile, our world quests for destinations will now live in the Pursuits section of your character inventory. Many Milestones from Year 1 have been converted to activity challenges. These will continue to grant powerful rewards, but they will no longer be displayed in the Milestone tray. When you access the Director, you’ll see activity challenges in the tooltip of the associated activity.

Activities

The base strike playlist for Destiny 2: Forsaken players has been updated to feature difficulty selection and modifiers. Heroic strikes are being retired on August 28 with Destiny Update 2.0. 

Forsaken Players

The strike playlist has three difficulties to select from:

Power 300

Power 400

Power 500

Once you’re 40 Power over a given playlist, it will no longer appear as an option for you to select.

This ensures a healthy matchmaking pool when players reach endgame Power levels.

The Power 500 playlist will always available.

Strikes will have modifiers.

Legacy Players

The strike playlist matches the legacy playlist that is currently available in Year 1.

Recommended Power 200.

Strikes will have modifiers.

Between August 28 and September 4, modifiers will be unavailable for all strike playlists.

The Nightfall activity is also being revisited for Season 4. Prestige difficulty is being retired, but the base difficulty for the Nightfall activity will increase. Additionally, players will have the ability to choose one of three Nightfall strikes each week. If there’s a specific Nightfall Unique Reward that a given player is hunting for, this reduces the time they have to wait for the strike to be featured again. While having three options, players may only select the strikes for which they own the appropriate expansions. Legacy players will still be able to enable modifiers via their Challenge Card. Scoring will not be available for legacy players in the 270 Power Nightfall.

Meditations are being retired and replaced with a Heroic story playlist. New campaign missions will be featured at 500 Power, while old campaign missions will be set to a Power level relative to their release. This ensures legacy players can still enjoy story activities at their leisure.

Ikora Rey’s Vanguard Research reputation tokens will no longer be used as a currency after August 28 and will be removed from player inventories. The Legendary parade gear will also no longer be available, so if you want it, get it before August 28.

Heroic adventures are being added to all destinations. When that destination is the Flashpoint, one adventure will be selected to be Heroic per day, with the exceptions of Mercury and Mars. Those two destinations will function as they currently do, but they will gain an additional adventure per day when they’re the featured Flashpoint. Players will no longer be able to purchase normal adventure tokens from vendors on destinations other than Mercury and Mars.

Activity modifiers will be shared across Heroic adventures, Heroic story missions, and strikes. This ensures that each day you know what to expect from the PvE content that you play as a ritual, and that when we balance and tune modifiers it’s happening across the game. This will include one weekly singe, one daily buff, and one daily debuff. The Brawler and Grenadier modifiers will have their recharge times adjusted to ensure they’re noticeable. Adjusting your equipment for either also has a rather significant impact. We’ve seen some pretty crazy plays by the new Solar Hunter in our playtest. Some experienced players out there may be reminded of the feelings found when they equipped Nothing Manacles in the past.

Economy Updates

For the last few weeks, we’ve seen a lot of players asking about items and currencies available in Year 1 and whether they’ll continue to be available in Year 2 or not. Expect the following changes on August 28, when Destiny Update 2.0 becomes available:

Destination materials will become your main source of reputation on their respective destinations.

Destination materials will be a part of the cost to infuse different weapons and armor across your arsenal.

Year 1 challenges that granted reputation tokens are being retired, but will be replaced by bounties offered on each destination that provide destination materials.

Destination tokens and Rare destination materials are no longer awarded, but you can still redeem them for reputation if you have them in your inventory.

Anything that previously granted destination tokens or Rare materials will reward Common destination materials moving forward.

The Gunsmith will also be updated in Season 4. In Year 1, this vendor required 40 Gunsmith Materials for one reputation package. This will increase to 100 Gunsmith Materials.

Iron Banner, Vanguard, and Crucible tokens earned in Season 3 may be redeemed at their respective vendors in Season 4. Trials of the Nine will be on hiatus during Season 4, and its reputation tokens will not be redeemable. At this time, we have not yet determined whether its currency will be used when it returns.

Eververse

As a new season begins with the launch of Forsaken, Eververse also gets a refresh.

Goals and Philosophies

Provide players with more data

Share Bright Engram reward probabilities on bungie.net

Provide players their private purchase history on bungie.net

Give players more choices to earn rewards the way they want

Full season of Prismatic Matrix

Free weekly Prismatic Facet

More Bright Dust earned from new bounties

Allow players new ways to customize their Guardians

Ghost projections

Legendary weapon skins

New Exotic ornaments and emotes

Eververse Bounties

Similar to how other bounties work, Tess will start offering bounties that reward Bright Dust to players. Here’s how they work: 

Each Bright Engram grants one bounty note in Season 4

Bounties refresh weekly, but players can acquire as many Eververse bounties as they have bounty notes

These Notes can be exchanged for a three different tiers of weekly Eververse bounties

Tier 1:

Costs 1 Eververse Bounty Note

Rewards 20 Bright Dust

Tier 2:

Costs 3 Eververse Bounty Notes

Rewards 70 Bright Dust

Tier 3:

Costs 6 Eververse Bounty Notes

Rewards 150 Bright Dust

You can carry one of each type at a time

Bounties will expire seven days after acquisition

Prismatic Matrix

The Prismatic Matrix returns in Season 4. We received a lot of feedback that players enjoyed this feature and would have preferred if it had stayed active for all of Season 3. This time, we plan to keep the Prismatic Matrix live all through Season 4. The free weekly Prismatic Facet will be obtained from a special Tier 1 Eververse bounty. This bounty does not require a bounty note and will cost 250 Glimmer. Players will still be able to hold the Prismatic Facets at one time.

Bright Dust

Continuing with the theme of giving players more control over their Bright Dust balance, Bright Dust gained from dismantling Eververse items will be granted at a fixed rate. Players can now reliably dismantle items for specific gains.

Collections and Eververse Items

Eververse items will be retrieved from the Collections interface like all other items. An exception is Year 2 Eververse Armor, which (like all other armor with random rolls) cannot be reacquired from the Collections. The ways in which players acquire and interact with emotes and weapon/armor ornaments have not changed. All other items can be retrieved for an expense of Bright Dust.

Current season Eververse items which have not been acquired will display in the Collections interface until the end of the season. Past season Eververse items which have not been acquired will not display in the Collections interface. This prevents players from having incomplete Collections that cannot be completed.

Bright Engram Updates

New Legendary weapon ornaments have been added to the Bright Engram. These are unlocked account-wide like all other ornaments in the game. A new Ghost Projections category will also be added to Bright Engrams. This account-unlockable item permits players to put a holographic projection badge above their Ghost. This badge is only visible when the player has their Ghost deployed for Navigation Mode. Weapon and armor mods will no longer be dropping from the Bright Engram. In their place, players will now receive bounty notes.

Eververse Armor and Perks

With the addition of Random Perk Rolls on armor, we have made some changes to how perks are applied to Eververse Armor. Eververse Armor acquired from Bright Engrams will have random perks when rewarded. Eververse Armor acquired from sources like the Prismatic Matrix or the Bright Dust Storefront will have fixed perks.

Eververse Leveling Rewards in Forsaken

Like the Red War campaign in Destiny 2, in Forsaken, Bright Engrams will not be earned until you hit the level cap. As players complete pre-Forsakencampaigns they will be rewarded with an Eververse gift package tailored to each experience, which will also include Bright Engrams. Once players reach their level cap, based on what Expansions they own, Bright Engrams will once again be awarded each time a player levels up.

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