#palisade 41

[madcap-nattery]

Integrity + Ebullience + This Being

[ahcoffeebeans2]

palisade 41: the experience

the future fucking sucks man

[coriolisunset]

i know everyone's sad about this episode but here's me calling the big reveal with perfect accuracy 354 days in advance

[ellasadventuresinfandoms]

my face literally the entire time the figure stuff was happening

[doobyous]

“We are coming home not to conquer, but to build. Our doors are open. Send your envoys. Send your theologians. We are eager to talk.”

[swordbreakerz]

it took me 3 days to finish the episode

[batboyblog]

Things Biden and the Democrats did, this week #11

March 22-29 2024

The Administration, with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg in the lead responded to the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore. Working with Governor Wes Moore and Mayor Brandon Scott (both Democrats) The Department of Transportation promises to clear the harbor and rebuild the bride. DoT has already released $60 million in emergency funds as a "down payment" and President Biden is expected to seek $1 billion from Congress.

Vice President Harris announced a number of actions and investments designed to improve the quality of life of the peoples of northern central America. driven by poverty, lack of economic opportunities, and out of control crime people in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras are taking great risks and trusting criminal human traffickers to try to reach the US. The Administration is working to improve conditions in the Northern Triangle so that is no longer necessary. Vice President Harris announced $1 billion dollars in new investments as part of the Central America Forward public-private partnership, since 2021 it has invested $5.2 billion in the region. Harris also announced $175 million dollars of direct aid from the US to Guatemala at a meeting with Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo.

The Department of Energy announced a $1.5 billion dollar loan to help restart the Palisades Nuclear Plant. This would mark the first time a nuclear power plant was brought back online after being decommissioned. The hope is keep the plant running till 2051, this 100% green power source is projected to prevent 111 million tons of CO2 emissions in its new life time, the same as taking 100,000 cars off the road. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer touted it as key for her state reaching its goal of 100% clean energy by 2040.

Vice President Harris launched a social media push to inform the public about the Biden-Harris Administration's SAVE Plan. The Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) Plan was launched last year as part of President Biden's efforts to bring student loan forgiveness to millions of borrowers. Currently 7.7 million people are enrolled in SAVE, under which anyone making $16 a hour or less has a monthly payment of $0 on their student loans. 4.5 million SAVE enrollees are making $0 a month payments and another 1 million pay less than $100 a month on their loan repayment, over 150,000 people so far have had their loans totally forgiven. Republicans are suing to try to shut down the SAVE Plan

President Biden took keep steps to ensure quality healthcare this week. Biden extended the window for low-income Americans to apply for Obamacare. The original deadline of July 31st has been pushed back to November 30th. Biden also rolled back Trump era rules that allowed subsidies for "Junk Health insurance" These plans offer very little coverage and often mislead consumers into believing they have insurance when they aren't covered. These short term plans also don't have meet Obamacare standards and can refuse coverage for preexisting conditions.

The EPA announced new regulations aimed at "turbocharging" the number of electric trucks on the road. The new rules aim to have 25% of new long-haul trucks, the heaviest often diesel trucks on the road, and 40% of medium-size trucks (box trucks and landscaping vehicles) be nonpolluting by 2032, currently just 2% are. The regulation would apply to more than 100 types of vehicles including tractor-trailers, ambulances, R.V.s, garbage trucks and moving vans. The new tailpipe limits are expected to prevent about a billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions by 2055.

the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services  announced that thanks to President Biden's Inflation Reduction Act, 41 different drugs will coast those on Medicare Part B less money than it did last year.  An estimated 763,700 people on Medicare use at least one of these drugs every year. Some enrollees will save as much as $3,575 per dose.

The Department of Energy announced $6 billion for an effort to decarbonize energy-intensive industries. The investment in 33 projects across 20 states will eliminate 14 million metric tons of CO2 emissions each year when finished. Each project is meant to be highly replicable and serve as a blueprint for future private sector ventures. 

President Biden signed an Executive Order to Strengthen the Recognition of Women’s History. The Order will launch a review of all historic sites run by the National Parks Service to determine ways to better highlight the role of women, from all backgrounds, in American History.

The Senate Confirmed President Biden's nominees, Ernesto Gonzalez, and Leon Schydlower to federal judgeships in Texas. This brings the total number of federal judges appointed by President Biden to 190.

[rjzimmerman]

In case we need visual reminders......

This photo:

The Palisades Fire burns near homes amid a powerful Santa Ana windstorm on January 7, 2025, in Pacific Palisades, California. A record-hot summer in California during 2024, combined with near-record dryness in southern California late in the year, helped set the stage for the catastrophic wildfires that have ravaged the region this week. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

And this chart:

And these maps:

Departure of temperature from average for 2024. North America, South America, Europe, Oceania, and Africa all had their hottest year on record. Asia had its second-hottest year on record, while Antarctica had its 17th-hottest year on record. It was the hottest year on record in more than 100 countries – including China, Canada, Mexico, Germany, Brazil, Greece, Malaysia, and South Korea – and in areas where a total of 3.3 billion people live, according to Carbon Brief. No regions experienced record cold. (Image credit: NOAA)

Change in average yearly temperature from 1995 to 2024. The regions with the strongest warming have been the Arctic, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and the waters off the Northeast and Western U.S. coasts.

Excerpt from this story from Yale Climate Connections:

In 2024, the planet broke the record set in 2023 for the hottest year on record, NOAA, NASA, the European Copernicus Climate Change Service, Berkeley Earth, and the UKMET Office reported on January 10. There were 14 straight months of record-breaking global temperatures from June 2023 through July 2024, and the July global temperature value was likely the hottest of any month since 1850. 

Human-caused climate change added an average of 41 days of dangerous heat globally in 2024, and it is likely the total number of people killed in extreme weather events intensified by climate change in 2024 is in the tens or hundreds of thousands, according to the World Weather Attribution group and Climate Central.

According to Berkeley Earth, 24% of the Earth’s surface experienced a locally record-high annual average temperature in 2024. Local record annual averages impacted an estimated 3.3 billion people — 40% of the global population — with 104 countries setting new national records for their annual average, including China, Canada, Mexico, Germany, Brazil, Greece, Malaysia, and South Korea.

Global ocean temperatures and land temperatures in 2024 were both the hottest on record, said NOAA. The record heat in the oceans in 2024 brought on a global coral bleaching event, the fourth one in recorded history (1998, 2010, 2014-17, and now 2024).

The year 2024 was the first in which global average surface temperatures exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels in the five leading datasets, with departures from average ranging between 1.46-1.62 degrees Celsius. (The differences in the datasets arise largely from using different baseline years for pre-industrial climate, such as 1850 versus 1880, and from slight differences in how researchers account for data-sparse areas such as the Arctic, especially prior to 1900.) While record heat in 2023 and 2024 was expected because of a strong El Niñ0 event that occurred in the Eastern Pacific, the full magnitude of the heat both years was higher than expected, for reasons that climate scientists are trying to understand.

Reaching 1.5 degrees Celsius in an individual year is not equivalent to a breach of the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C limit – which refers to long-term warming over a period of 30 years – but it nevertheless indicates that the world is quickly approaching this internationally agreed threshold.

[swallowtailed]

palisade 41

honestly don’t really know where to begin here.

because, like, we all kinda knew this was coming, right? odds were it had to happen sometime. now it has.

but there’s still a real cosmic unfairness to the timing of it. figure died right after they decided they didn’t want to. breaking the wheel of their resurrection is fine and all, but they fought so hard to escape clem and join perennial that it doesn’t really ring true to me.

hearing future in the same sentence reminded me that there’s another suite of definitions for figure, aside from the noun meaning shape or form—the verb meaning guess, consider, imagine.

i’m inclined to read future and perennial as two sides of the same coin—two views of the principality. future sees an inevitable road toward culmination, perennial sees that it’s all the same fucking cycle. also, future seizing on a moment of power from perennial and turning it to their own ends.

real gur just cannot catch a break. they��re stuck with future, inside their own reanimated corpse, guarded by the shell of figure? some real eternal torment there.

so, you know. shit sucks!!

i was really, really hoping eclectic would steal future, and it would also have been incredible for gur sevraq (who, as we know, stole the future) to be stolen from future, but the dice fall as they will

really interesting contrast between the two sides of this arc wrt divine/axiom/mortal/etc relationships. thisbe is guiding integrity and communicating with ebullience, building relationships across ways of being. figure is destroyed just by exposure to divine power, subsumed by the weight of a god rearing up on its own. the axiom being willing to treat with thisbe, the divine destroying figure. which is maybe less about those powers than about the hands moving them—instrumentalization as always a core theme of palisade. 

of course it is also a cautionary tale of the capriciousness of dice. if figure and gur had gotten to speak with future i can imagine it going more like thisbe’s side. but maybe not! we’ll never know.

characters being demanded to envision a future was one of my favorite beats in partizan and it was really cool to hit that again (and to call back to leap!). but also heartbreaking. cori, happy and safe…

aw fuck the crew’s still gonna have to find out that figure is dead… mortality of course goes hand in hand with grief. much like valence’s death i think the positioning of figure’s death is ultimately going to be shaped most by reactions to it

dre’s pc deaths are always so fraught, huh. valence and chine were also kind of messy, sudden deaths—no clean tragedy. which, like, is life, but also, ;-;

the music was incredible. like breathing. and the way the dirge just stops—blinks out.

eclectic drawing up the seismic power of opposition, his own power, was really moving. a bit of grace in that moment.

i’m not sure where they’re gonna go from here, especially in terms of character arcs. it’s a rough downbeat. kind of falls in line with the conflict turns, though—fighting back and forth down to the bitter end. might be a bleak finale although at least one more thing seems set to unfold in this arc so honestly who knows

incidentally, bets on that: the smell of computer parts immediately made me think of the nobel, but the mechanical whine heard across the continent made me wonder if it could be palisade waking up (/being woken up). either way, it’s definitely getting to be alarm clock time, right?? (on the other hand maybe this is just motion activating all across palisade, but a bunch of motion factories just got taken down.)

it’s nice that the a-plot crew were having a fun heist though. cori deserves an alise breka mission

tragedy-ass podcast.

[frmartinshomiliesandreflections]

21st November- Fr. Martin's Reflections/Homilies on Today's Mass Readings for:

Thursday, Thirty Third Week in Ordinary Time (Luke 19:41-44): ‘He shed tears over it’.

And For

The Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Matthew 12:46-50).

Thursday, Thirty Third Week in Ordinary Time

Gospel (Except USA) Luke 19:41-44 Jesus sheds tears over the coming fate of Jerusalem.

As Jesus drew near Jerusalem and came in sight of the city he shed tears over it and said, ‘If you in your turn had only understood on this day the message of peace! But, alas, it is hidden from your eyes! Yes, a time is coming when your enemies will raise fortifications all round you, when they will encircle you and hem you in on every side; they will dash you and the children inside your walls to the ground; they will leave not one stone standing on another within you – and all because you did not recognise your opportunity when God offered it!’

Gospel (USA) Luke 19:41-44 If you only knew what makes for peace.

As Jesus drew near Jerusalem, he saw the city and wept over it, saying, “If this day you only knew what makes for peace– but now it is hidden from your eyes. For the days are coming upon you when your enemies will raise a palisade against you; they will encircle you and hem you in on all sides. They will smash you to the ground and your children within you, and they will not leave one stone upon another within you because you did not recognize the time of your visitation.”

Reflections (8)

(i) Thursday, Thirty Third Week in Ordinary Time

It has been said that to love someone is to have one’s heart broken. When someone we love suffers or dies, our heart breaks, and we give expression to our breaking heart in tears. In today’s gospel reading, Jesus weeps over the city of Jerusalem. His tears were tears of love. He loved the people of this city; he wanted what was best for them, as love always wants what is best for the beloved. He wanted them to know the peace which his message could bring them. However, he foresaw that the rejection of his message, of himself, by the leaders of the people would bring suffering and death down upon the whole city. Their leaders failed to see that God was visiting them and speaking to them in and through Jesus, God’s beloved Son. They failed to recognize their opportunity when God offered it, in the words of the gospel reading. The Lord continues to weep today when those whom he loves fail to take the path to peace and happiness that he calls them and prompts them to take. He lived, died and rose from the dead out of love for all men and women, so that they would follow in his way, live by his truth and so find peace, that fullness of life which he so desperately desires for all. The gospel reading suggests that the Lord is often powerless before our refusal to accept his love and allow our lives to be shaped by his love. All he can do is weep. Whenever we find ourselves weeping over situations where violence and suffering prevail, because of people’s refusal to live by the gospel message, it is the Lord who is weeping through us. However, the Lord rejoices over us, declares us blessed, whenever we allow him to work through us to bring the light of his love into the darkness of our world, whenever we create a space, by what we say and do, for the Lord’s fuller coming into our world.

And/Or

(ii) Thursday, Thirty Third Week in Ordinary Time

Luke presents Jesus in a very emotional state in today’s gospel reading, weeping because the city of Jerusalem did not receive him, and did not recognize that in Jesus God was visiting them. The city will now have to live with the consequences of rejecting Jesus. The tears of Jesus are the tears of a love that has been rejected. Jesus came to reveal and make present God’s hospitable love for all, but many rejected God’s messenger of good news. There is a sense in which Jesus, and God who sent him, was helpless before such rejection. All Jesus can do is weep at human intransigence. Jesus cannot force himself on people; when rejected, he can only move on. He has come to seek and to save the lost, but the lost, and that includes us all, have to be open and responsive to his searching love. He walks with us and wants to enter into communion with us, but, every so often, he needs us to say to him, in the words of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, ‘Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over’.

And/Or

(iii) Thursday, Thirty Third Week in Ordinary Time

Luke tends to play down the emotions of Jesus in his gospel. Yet, in this morning’s gospel he portrays Jesus weeping over the city of Jerusalem. He weeps because he knows that the city, at least those who rule there, will not recognize him as the visitor from God who brings God’s peace. Jesus will be put to death in the city as God’s rejected prophet, God’s rejected Son. Jesus is helpless before this ill-fated decision that the city will make. All he can do is weep. Earlier in Luke’s gospel Jesus had said of Jerusalem that he had desired to gather her children as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but they were not willing. There is a sense in which the Lord remains helpless before human unwillingness to respond to his longing for us. There is only so much he can do to enter into a loving relationship with us; at some point he will need our willingness, our openness. He needs our free response. Yet, the good news of the gospels is that he remains faithful to us; he waits patiently for our response. Even if it comes at the eleventh hour, he welcomes it. His tears do not make him bitter or close his heart to us; his tears are always tears of love, a faithful love that endures in the face of human resistance.

And/Or

(iv) Thursday, Thirty Third Week in Ordinary Time

The tears that we shed often speak volumes about the feelings that we have for someone. In this morning’s gospel reading Jesus is described as weeping over the city of Jerusalem. Jesus had a deep love for this city and its people. Earlier in Luke’s gospel he had said that he had wanted to gather its inhabitants to himself as a hen gathers her chicks under her wing. Yet, Jesus must have foreseen that the leaders within the city, the members of the Sanhedrin, would reject him. In fact they would go on to choose a rebel against Rome in his place, Barabbas. It was the choice for rebellion against Rome that would result in the destruction of the city about which Jesus weeps in the gospel reading. Jesus was powerless before the choice that the people of Jerusalem made, or its leaders made on their behalf. Our choices always have consequences for good or ill. The Lord wants us to choose what he would choose, to make our choices in accordance with his will for our lives. He weeps when we fail to do so. The gospel reading suggests that the Lord cannot force himself upon us. He seeks us out but we have to allow ourselves to be found. He offers us a way and provides the means for us to take that way but we have to be willing to take it. Yet, the gospels suggest that the Lord will not give us on us easily. His tears do not make him bitter or close his heart to us; his tears are always tears of love, a faithful love that endures in the face of human resistance.

And/Or

(v) Thursday, Thirty Third Week in Ordinary Time

At the beginning of his ministry, Jesus announced that God was powerfully reigning in and through his ministry, ‘the kingdom of God is at hand’. God’s life-giving power was at work through Jesus for the healing of the sick, for the forgiving of sinners, for the inclusion of the excluded and for the accepting of the rejected. Yet, today’s gospel reading reminds us that there were limits to this power of God working through Jesus. Jesus weeps over the city of Jerusalem because its people, especially its leaders, did not recognize the opportunity God was offering everyone in and through his ministry. For all his power, Jesus was powerless before their refusal to recognize that his coming was a visit from God. The power of Jesus was the power of love, the power of a divine love which is stronger than sin and death. All love, even divine love, must be freely received because it is in the nature of love to be a free gift. The tears of Jesus speak volumes about the capacity of human freedom to reject the gift of God’s unconditional love offered to us through his Son. The Lord’s tears could be shed for any of us because we can all fail to recognize the opportunity when God offers us. Yet, the good news, the gospel, is that our failure need never have the last word because God’s love revealed in Jesus is stronger than our failure and it endures in the face of it.

And/Or

(vi) Thursday, Thirty Third Week in Ordinary Time

One of the most distressing experiences in life is to be rejected by someone we love and care about. This is the kind of sadness that engulfs Jesus at the beginning of today’s gospel reading as he sheds tears over the city of Jerusalem. This city and its people always had a special place in God’s purpose. According to the Jewish Scriptures, it was the place where God had chosen to dwell. Jesus knew that the message of God’s kingdom, God’s reign of love, that he had preached throughout Galilee also had to be preached in Jerusalem, the city that was closest to God’s heart and, therefore, to Jesus’ heart. Yet, unlike Galilee, where Jesus’ message and ministry were often well received, Jerusalem proved to be impervious to his message. It would live up to its darker reputation as a city that kills God’s prophets. The powerful people of the city were soon to reject Jesus in the most violent way. God was visiting the city in love through Jesus and this love was rejected. An opportunity for the city to experience the peace that comes from receiving God’s loving visit was lost, and the gospel reading suggests that this broke Jesus’ heart. Jesus is helpless before people’s refusal to receive his love, God’s love. Jesus’ desire to be in a loving relationship with us is never in doubt, but his desire needs to find an echo in our hearts if it is to come to pass. He respects our freedom to reject his love and the peace it brings, but it continues to break his heart. Yet, he does not give up on us, just as he did not give up on Jerusalem. As risen Lord, the first place he instructed his followers to preach the gospel in was the city of Jerusalem, ‘beginning in Jerusalem’. The Lord continues to wait for our response. Indeed, he works for our response by sending the Holy Spirit in our lives to prompt us and move us.

And/Or

(vi) Thursday, Thirty Third Week in Ordinary Time

We have all shed tears at some time. Very often, we weep over those we love. We weep at the sickness and death of our loved ones. When we give our heart to someone in love, we know our heart will inevitably break. We accept the suffering that loving someone brings. The alternative is not to love anyone, which is the poorest form of life. Jesus was God’s love in human form. His love for others had a unique quality and the suffering which his love brought him also had a unique quality. Because he loved more than any human being could, he suffered more than any human being could, and that suffering often led him to weep bitter tears. In today’s gospel reading, Jesus weeps over the city of Jerusalem. Jesus had earlier said that he had wanted to gather the people of Jerusalem to himself, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but they refused his loving outreach to them. The rejection of his loving visitation to them brought him great suffering, which led to his weeping bitter tears over the city. ‘If you had only understood on this day the message of peace’. Their rejection of Jesus’ love would have tragic consequences for the city. Jesus was often powerless before human rejection of his love. We may love others but we cannot force their love for us; we are powerless before the mystery of their freedom to accept or reject our love. The Lord’s love for us is not in doubt. What is in doubt is our willingness to receive his love and to respond to it. One of the most important questions Jesus asks in all four gospels is his question to Peter in John’s gospel, ‘Do you love me?’ It is a question addressed to each one of us personally. We are all invited to make our own Peter’s response to Jesus’ question on that occasion, ‘Lord, you know everything, you know that I love you’.

And/Or

(viii) Thursday, Thirty Third Week in Ordinary Time

There are two places in the four gospels where Jesus is portrayed as weeping, at the tomb of his friend Lazarus in the gospel of John and just before the enters the city of Jerusalem for the last time in the gospel of Luke, which is today’s gospel reading. His tears at the tomb of Lazarus express his sorrow at the death of a beloved friend and the devastating impact of Lazarus’ death on his sisters, Martha and Mary, who were also friends of Jesus. The tears of Jesus in today’s gospel reading express his sadness over the failure of a city to welcome him as the bringer of God’s peace. Both set of tears spring from love. We weep over those we love and care about. Jesus had a deep love for the city of Jerusalem and its inhabitants. Earlier in Luke’s gospel he had exclaimed, ‘How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!’ It is a very maternal, motherly, image that Jesus uses of himself. The tears of Jesus in today’s gospel reading are like the tears of a mother who has been rejected by her children. Jesus’ statement, ‘you were not willing’, reminds us that the Lord’s tremendous love for us needs some response from us. At some level, our will needs to be brought into line with his will, our desire needs to correspond in some way to his desire for us. The good news is that, even the smallest of openings, faith the size of a mustard seed, as Jesus once said, is all he needs for his loving purpose for our lives to come to pass.

------------------------------------------

Feast of The Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Gospel (Except USA) Matthew 12:46-50 My mother and my brothers are anyone who does the will of my Father in heaven.

Jesus was speaking to the crowds when his mother and his brothers appeared; they were standing outside and were anxious to have a word with him. But to the man who told him this Jesus replied, ‘Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?’ And stretching out his hand towards his disciples he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers. Anyone who does the will of my Father in heaven, he is my brother and sister and mother.’

Gospel (USA) Matthew 12:46-50 Stretching out his hands toward his disciples, he said, Here are my mother and my brothers.

While Jesus was speaking to the crowds, his mother and his brothers appeared outside, wishing to speak with him. Someone told him, “Your mother and your brothers are standing outside, asking to speak with you.” But he said in reply to the one who told him, “Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?” And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my heavenly Father is my brother, and sister, and mother.”

Reflections (7)

(i) Feast of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Today’s feast commemorates the presentation of the child Mary in the Temple of Jerusalem by her parents. We seldom think of Mary as a child. All the images of Mary we are familiar with are either of Mary as an adult or of Mary in heavenly glory. Yet, when we are first introduced to Mary in the gospels at the moment of her annunciation, we should probably think of her as a very young woman, no more than a teenager. She must have grown up as a child in a very faith-filled home. Otherwise she would not have emerged as a woman of such strong and generous faith at the time of the annunciation. Today’s feast celebrates the fact that as a very young child Mary’s parents presented her to the Lord in the Temple, gave her over to the Lord’s purpose for her life. It was as if her parents were saying, ‘Lord here is our child. We know that she belongs to you more than she belongs to us’. Mary’s parents were recognizing that her relationship with the Lord was even more significant that her relationship with them. Today’s feast reminds us that the most important relationship in our lives is our relationship with the Lord. Every day we try to present ourselves to the Lord, offering ourselves to him. Every day we pray that God’s purpose for our lives would come to pass and that God’s will would be done in our lives. In the gospel reading Jesus declares that those who do the will of his Father, in whose lives God’s will is done, are his brothers and sisters and mother. It was above all Mary who did the will of Jesus’ heavenly Father. In the prayer that Jesus gave us to pray, the Lord’s Prayer, we pray, ‘Father in heaven, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven’. Heaven is that state where God’s kingdom has fully come, where God’s will is fully done. To the extent that we do the will of our heavenly Father here and now, something of heaven comes to earth. When we allow God’s purpose for our lives to shape us, as Mary did, then we create an opening for God’s kingdom to come among us.

And/Or

(ii) Feast of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

The feast of Mary’s presentation in the temple in Jerusalem as a child celebrates an important truth about Mary: From the beginning of her life, she was dedicated to God, given over to God’s purposes. Because of her dedication to God from an early age, she was called by God to become a greater temple than the magnificent temple in Jerusalem. If the temple in Jerusalem was the house of God, the place where God was believed to be present in a special way, Mary became the house of the Lord in an even greater way, because she carried the Lord in her womb until she give birth to him. God came to dwell in her, through Jesus, because she was open to God’s presence from the earliest years of her life. She is the prime example of the group that Jesus refers to in this morning’s gospel reading as those ‘who do the will of my Father in heaven’. Today’s feast celebrates the fact that from her childhood Mary did the will of God, and was therefore ready to become the temple of God’s Son at the time of God’s choosing. We too are called to do the will of the Father in heaven so that we too can become temples of the Lord, people who carry the Lord’s presence to others, as Mary did. Writing to the church in Corinth, Paul says, ‘Do you not know that you are God’s temple?’ We ask Mary to pray for us now so that we may always do the will of the Father and so become temples of God as she was.

And/Or

(iii) Feast of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Mary’s presentation was celebrated in Jerusalem in the sixth century. A church was built there in honour of this mystery. The Eastern Church was more interested in the feast, but it does appear in the West in the 11th century, and in the 16th century it became a feast of the universal Church. The feast stresses an important truth about Mary: From the beginning of her life, she was dedicated to God. She herself became a greater temple than any temple made by hands. God came to dwell in her in a marvellous manner and sanctified her in advance for her unique role in God's saving work. God came to dwell in her, through Jesus, because she was open to God’s presence from the earliest years of her life. She is the prime example of the group that Jesus refers to in this morning’s gospel reading, those ‘who do the will of my Father in heaven’. Today’s feast celebrates the fact that from her childhood Mary did the will of God, and was therefore ready to become the temple of God’s Son at the time of God’s choosing. We too are called to do the will of the Father in heaven and, thereby, to become temples of God, people who carry God’s presence to others. We ask Mary to pray for us now so that we may always be faithful to that calling. 

And/Or

(iv) Feast of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Today we commemorate the presentation of the child Mary in the temple at Jerusalem. This feast celebrates the consecration of Mary’s life to the Lord. From the beginning of her life, she was dedicated to God by her parents, given over to God’s purposes for her life. According to the gospels of Matthew and Luke, in her teenage years, Mary was called by God to become a greater temple than the magnificent temple in Jerusalem in which she was presented as a child. The temple in Jerusalem was the house of God, the place where God was believed to be present in a special way. God wanted Mary to become the house of the Lord in an even greater way, because she was to carry the Lord in her womb, until she gave birth to him. God came to dwell in her, through Jesus, God’s Son. Because she was open to God’s presence from the earliest years of her life, she said ‘yes’ to this wonderful calling. She gave herself over to God’s will for her life. She is the prime example of the group that Jesus refers to in this morning’s gospel reading as those ‘who do the will of my Father in heaven’. Today’s feast celebrates the fact that from her childhood Mary had always done the will of God, and was therefore ready to become the temple of God’s Son at the time of God’s choosing. In this morning’s gospel reading Jesus declares that this true family are those who do the will of his Father in heaven. We look to Mary to show us what it means to say ‘yes’ to God’s call in our lives. Insofar as we can enter into Mary’s ‘yes’, we too will become temples of the Lord, like her. The Lord will be formed in us and we will offer him to the world by our lives, as she did.

(v) Feast of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

When we hear the word ‘presentation’ in a religious context, we tend to think of the presentation of Jesus in the Temple of Jerusalem, the fourth joyful mystery of the Rosary. The church celebrates the feast of the presentation of Jesus on the 2nd of February. The church also celebrates the memorial of the presentation of Mary, on this day, 21st November. This memorial has been kept in the church since at least the eight century. It commemorates the consecration of Mary’s life to God. In the first reading today, God calls on the city of Jerusalem, the daughter of Zion, to sing and rejoice because he is coming to dwell in the midst of them. These are words that could easily be addressed to Mary. She too can sing and rejoice because the Lord came to dwell in the midst of her, in her womb. Indeed, according to Luke’s gospel, she did sing and rejoice in response to this good news, in her prayer that has come to be known as the Magnificat. We too can sing and rejoice that the Lord has come to dwell within Mary, because through the Lord’s dwelling within her, he has come to dwell in the midst of us all. It is through Mary that God became Emmanuel, God with us. The Lord was able to dwell within Mary because, in the words of the gospel reading, she was someone who did the will of God the Father in heaven. She was completely given over to doing God’s will, to allowing God to do his will in and through her. This is the aspect of Mary’s life we are celebrating today, her giving over of herself to God and to God’s purposes. Through Mary, God has come to dwell among us in the person of Jesus, now risen Lord. Mary shows us how to respond to that wonderful initiative of God towards us. Like her, we are to give ourselves over to doing God our Father’s will, as that will has been revealed to us by Jesus.

And/Or

(vi) Feast of The Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

There is no scene in the gospels corresponding to today’s memorial. Yet, there is a presumption that Mary’s parents would have presented her to the Lord in the Temple of Jerusalem when she was a child. Christian tradition has understood that Mary’s presentation to the Lord by her parents symbolized the consecration of her life to the Lord. As her parents presented her to the Lord, Mary as an adult presented herself to the Lord, made herself available for God’s purpose, as expressed in her response to the angel Gabriel, ‘Let what you have said be done to me’. In a similar way, our parents presented us to the Lord on the day of our baptism. As we grow towards adulthood, we then confirm for ourselves what happened for us on the day of our baptism. Our confirmation is our personal confirming of our baptism, which we try to live out every day. Mary’s giving of herself over to God’s purpose for her life did not always come easy to her, because God’s ways are not our ways. In today’s gospel she and other members of her family approached where Jesus was teaching and stood outside anxious to have a word with him. However, rather than just going out to his mother, Jesus sent back word to her that he now had a new family. His disciples, those who did the will of God as Jesus revealed it, were now his brother and sister and mother. Mary had to learn to let go of her son to God’s purpose for his life. When we enter into a personal relationship with God, it is always God who does the leading and we who try to follow. God’s purposes are always greater and more mysterious than ours, and so there is always a letting go to God on our part. That doesn’t come easy to us, no more than it came easy to Mary, but if we allow God to have God’s way in our life, we can be assured that it will be the way of life for us and for all we influence.

And/Or

(vii) Feast of The Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

This feast originated in the Eastern Church. It commemorates the presentation of Mary to God by her parents in the Temple of Jerusalem, when she was a child. It reflects the church’s understanding of Mary’s subsequent grace-filled life as wholly given over to God’s purpose. Today’s gospel reading suggests that there were times when she struggled to understand God’s purpose for her life, especially in relation to her son Jesus. She sets out from Nazareth with other members of Jesus’ family to Capernaum where Jesus was ministering. Perhaps, they wanted him to come home and rest. However, Mary subsequently discovered that this was not God’s purpose for Jesus or for her. Jesus sent word out to Mary and his relatives that they no longer had any claim on him because he was starting a new family of his disciples and from now on they would be his mother and brothers and sisters. There was much here for Mary to ponder. What she wanted for Jesus as a mother was not necessarily what God wanted for him as his heavenly Father. In that sense, Mary’s experience can be very close to our own. Like her, we may want to give ourselves over to God’s purpose, we may want to do God’s will, but, like her, we can struggle to discern what God’s purpose for our lives really is. We sometimes have to come to the painful recognition that what we want for ourselves and for others isn’t always what God wants. We can’t allow ourselves to become too sure of God’s desire for our lives or the lives of others. Like Mary, we have to keep ourselves open to where the Lord is leading us. Like her, we need to keep prayerfully pondering on our life experience, trusting in the Lord’s promise that those who seek will find.

Fr. Martin Hogan.

[ninthprime]

palisade 41 spoilers

i feel like i don’t have a firm opinion on the figure situation yet because it’s so sudden that i feel like i need to see the long term consequences (i felt this way about valence too), but i do have an opinion on the gur situation and it’s that it’s so bleak and it’s also perfect. so much of this season has been about the way divines are used as instruments and then how they respond to it- the afflictions being former divines who were hurt and warped somehow, the literal existence of the delegates, integrity being taken from dahlia and then trying to remake them, even perennial and arbitrage trying to take things into their own hands in some ways. i’ve heard people discuss future as one of the most “personality-less” divines before and that being turned on its head during this season is completely appropriate and slots in with everything we’ve seen. after thousands of years of being treated as a tool, there’s nothing stopping a being like a divine from trying something else.

and as a gurposter the other fascinating thing about it to me is that it lowkey reframes a lot of gur’s character. gur introduced himself in one of his first intros with a set of titles that included “liberator of the divine future.” but just because you’re using future for purposes outside of authoritarian rule doesn’t mean you’ve liberated it, if you’re using it in the same ways everyone else did. considering future decided to walk around in gur’s literal corpse and start promoting colonization, i get the impression gur was just another in a long list of people who passed it around and interpreted it for their own ends. i think it’s easy to see gur’s central fuckup as their big fight with clem on icebreaker, and that was certainly the moment that was fatal, but this introduces the idea that gur was making the wrong choices years before, when they took the “little golden ball” that clem insulted in that fight and just assumed that doing that was what future would approve of. and now gur’s being passed around between clem, figure and finally future (and to some extent autonomy itself and perennial) in the same way future was passed around for so long. gur stealing future and then future eventually taking their identity, worshipping the true divine and then feeling abandoned when they disperse with logos kantel, getting into the fight with clem and then spending years with her denying their existence, and then being placed with figure only for future to destroy and use him too…there is basically no part of gur’s life, other than helping found millennium break, that has not been recast as a hopeless endeavor or terrible mistake. real unprecedented levels of destroying a person’s identity.

it’s good tragic stuff and fits in really well with a lot of what this season has touched upon in terms of relationships between divines and people. uhhhh hey brnine sure hope your relationship with asepsis stays “normal” and “fine” : )

[clementineskesh]

palisade 41

(spoiler in rot13 reaction not)

"vs Qer unq ebyyrq 3 fvkrf evtug urer vg'f qbar"

"bu ab" tnfc "ubyl fuvg" "bu zl tbq, bu zl TBQ" "jung n cresrpg gvzr gb qb vg"

I AM AN HOUR AND A HALF AWAY FROM HOME ITS 11 PM AND I STARTED SCREAMING WHAT THE FUUUUCK WHAT THE *FUCK* WHAT THE *FUCK* YO WHAT THE FUCK OVER AND OVER AGAIN UNTIL THEY STARTED ACTUALLY DESCRIBING THE CONSEQUENCE THEN I HAD TO PULL OVER TO POST ABOUT BC WHAT THE FUCK NO WAY WHAT THE FUCK (Rot13) SVTHER QVQ EBYY GUERR FVKRF NAQ RKCYBQR WE WERE FUCKING RIGHT

[ncisladaily]

NCIS: Los Angeles actor Eric Christian Olsen’s family lost their home to the Palisades Fire.

His wife, Sarah Wright Olsen, revealed in a Monday, Jan. 13 post on the Instagram account for her podcast, The Mother Daze Podcast, that she smelled the smoke from the fire herself. On Wednesday, Jan. 15, she followed up with an Instagram post that showed images of their home after it was destroyed.

She penned a message revealing that their family is safe. Eric, 47, and Sarah, 41, share three children, Winter Story Olsen, 4,  Esmé Olivia, 8, and Wyatt Oliver, 11.

“It’s impossible to put into words these last few days. We are together and safe and surrounded by love. Thank you to uncle Dave and aunt Dani who took in so many of us,” Sarah began in the caption. 

“We lost our home. It was one of the first areas to go. Our kids have said ‘we all took our first steps there,’ ” she continued. “It’s so hard to say goodbye to our gorgeous town, our special school and this place we have loved for 13 years.”

The Baeo co-founder added how “grateful” the family is “for the outpouring of love.”

“We have received so many messages from friends offering their homes, food, clothing, hugs, things for the kids, support and we are just blown away. 😭. It’s what keeps making us tear up,” she wrote. “Thank you it means so much to us. More soon. ❤️.”

She included a photo of the family of five together as they stood at a beach overlook and gazed at the Pacific Ocean. Sarah also added three images of their home burnt down and the rubble that surrounded their home, including their destroyed car.

The Los Angeles wildfires began on Jan. 7, and at the time of publication, the two largest fires, the Palisades and Eaton fires, continue to burn, with 21% and 45% containment, respectively. The recent fires have become the most destructive firestorm in the city's history, wiping out over 12,300 buildings and causing 24 fatalities.

PEOPLE has reported that several celebrities have lost their homes in the fires, including  Billy Crystal Paris Hilton, Candy Spelling, Cameron Mathison, Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt, Ricki Lake, Adam Brody and Leighton Meester, Anna Faris, Cobie Smulders and Taran Killam, John Goodman, Eugene Levy and many more.

[eclecticopposition]

31 23 41, 5 & 23 for wire guy

aah, thank you for the ask! :}

fic writer asks

unsure if you meant 23 for wire guy or if it was one of the [insert fic] questions (probably 22 or 24!), so we're going to answer both of those! (if it was another number, you can always send in another ask)

anyways, putting this under a cut to spare your dash. wire guy talk and palisade stuff below.

(also, you should read wire guy.)

31. What’s your ideal fic length to write?

actually finishable is nice. so like, 12000 words? there are a few points that just feel nice to our brain. we can write a good 2200 and 2700, a pretty good 5k, and a really good 8k. a solid fic to us is right around the length of an average wire guy chapter. or it's one of our runaway projects, like oceanus. we do love getting tied up in a good longfic.

this doesn't answer your question. how about "the more words we can put in it without making it worse the better"?

23. What’s a trope, AU, or concept you’ve never written, but would like to?

we'd like to write a nonlinear weird fic or something with poetry. something experimental that might be incredibly unapproachable, at least to us.

41. Link a fic that made you think, “Wow, I want to write like that.”

well, our first favorite fic author was @estelraca, so we think we've gotta shout them out here. they turned apollo justice into a werewolf and we had a great time. more recently, we admired the ambience and construction and emotional nuance of the center cannot hold. it's a hunter x hunter fic that we really enjoyed. we also highly recommend Pound The Table! marvel universe lawyer fic written by an actual lawyer. it rules. we don't even go here, and it's so good and explains itself so well that we honestly don't need to.

and for wire guy;

5. What do you wish someone would ask you about [Wire Guy]? Answer it now!

The question is "what is wire guy actually about?"

The answer is "being a wire guy".

And then the actual question is "what does that mean?"

"what does that mean?" is also the actual answer to the first question. this is what wire guy is about.

(and then we've got two thousand words of elaboration, on both this and how it's juxtaposed with two other guys, which is what we would love to be asked about. or, arguably, we have like 120k words of elaboration, 74k of which are currently posted.)

(the other thing wire guy is about is the fact that phrygian had so many depression flags through all of palisade, but because brnine was brnine and cori and figure were having much louder breakdowns, the Copers on the team slipped through the cracks. so we wrote a novel.)

(it's also about pirates. and weird metal heists. we've been told that this fic has more metal heists than may be strictly necessary.)

22. Who is your favorite character in [Wire Guy] and why?

that's such a good question. the obvious answer is phrygian, which is why it's all in their POV! we think that some of the liberties we took with their character were pretty personal to us. working through trauma on their own, struggling with alienation and coersive pressure, being trapped and used, and just the general way they engage with reality was pretty bound up in where our mind was at. we think that given how many people have said they saw something of themselves in our phrygian depiction, too, we might have hit on something resonant. (haha.)

phrygian is such a tragic character, and we think about them a lot. not even just because we're attached to them! (admittedly we are attached to them and we get an emotional spike every time they're mentioned). not getting into heavy palisade spoilers for friendship reasons, but the degree of alienation that they experience and the fact that *the players* are weirded out by things that we personally parse as attempts to self express or connect just gets to us. it's one of those things where we want to crawl around in their brain and just talk about everything we find in there. there's so much depth! most of it is very sad even though it doesn't have to be! and canon does not explore it nearly as much as we want it to, because that's completely infeasible for a podcast or even a work of fiction! we wouldn't even want them to. what we want is like, drops of the pure extract of phrygian characterization juice at frequent and irregular intervals.

also, they're extremely cool and competent. we love the powergaming and watching them win. cool gun go brrrr.

(the second secret answer is lantana lao. this is because lan is a third option to the dreadful bind presented to phrygian in the form of lang silversite, someone who supports them and the branched enthusiastically but in a specifically military capacity, and wants them to go all in on using themself for war; and kel pire, someone who encourages their presence in a behind the scenes capacity, but undermines their boundaries and is much less open to the idea of them having any sort of public presence. what she is able to represent doesn't actually happen in wire guy, but it does happen both in an extras fic that we're also writing, and in our heart. and in wire guy, she's actually their friend! she actually wants to learn about the branched! we want them to have friends. we want them to get to talk to someone who actually talks to them and is a meaningful point of connection in a world that is so unwilling to give it. is that so much to ask?)

24. Are there any easter eggs in [Wire Guy], and if so, what are they?

there are a few! some are in future chapters. but most of them are little partizan nods, which we have a lot of fun with. the ring that lets leap listen in on nidean intelligence comes to mind.

does repeated symbolism count as an easter egg? if so, keep an eye out for things phrygian refers to as useful; keep an eye on wearing shoes; keep an eye on when phrasing is repeated back with small changes; keep an eye on that classic reference to blood in the back of their throat. and keep a close eye on the lights. phrygian does, sometimes.

[lizzybeanbutt]

hey those who saw my palisade tumblr liveblogs. I made a backlog of them on my website and picked it back up there! New format allows me to put in doodles I make while listening. Liveblog continues from episode 32 and is currently at episode 41, which is a very normal and regular episode to be at now 👍🏽

[darkmoonseance]

about to listen to palisade 41 pray for me