Boldly Going, Boldly Gone

yharnamsnewslug:

babyfoxcollectionthings:

Hate when people post these videos with “ethnic” tag and leave out who these people are, what their culture is or even what they’re singing in.

Anyway, this is probably one of the best bands of this decade and they’re Otyken!

I can’t recommend My Wing enough. Their songs are so much fun - Genesis is also a blast. Go listen to them!!!!

(via cryptix23)

ilovemesomevincentprice:

Anon reminded me of this, so I’m bringing this back.

Vincent Price being interviewed by the muppets - Johnny Carson Show

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unbidden-yidden:

psykulor:

phoukanamedpookie:

psykulor:

unbidden-yidden:

unbidden-yidden:

In general, I think it’s currently really important for progressive Christians to be very loud about being both progressive and deeply religious Christians, and for everyone else fighting for progressive values to be supportive of them doing just that. I know that’s like, idk, counter-intuitive or cringe or whatever, but seriously folks, the alternative is that progressive Christians have to be quiet about their faith to be accepted within broader secular and interfaith progressive advocacy, which means that the regressive asshole Christians (a) sound that much louder and (b) dominate the USian religious landscape all the more. That’s a problem, for all of us.

We need people pushing back within the faith as well as outside of it, because that destroys any edifice that this is about Christianity and religious freedom.

You can be a devout Christian and also:

• Openly, proudly, and without being forced to remain celibate or otherwise limit your full expression of self, identify as LGBTQ+ or be a supportive ally.
• Advocate for full reproductive autonomy and comprehensive sex education.
• Love and support people of other religious groups, non-religious people and/or atheists, by choosing to believe that a truly loving God would not pursue anything less than universal salvation.
• Stand against evangelism and proselytizing as they have thus far been interpreted and used, because there are ways to interpret the Great Commission that don’t promote colonialism and cultural genocide.
• A steward of the earth, protecting God’s beautiful creation and lovingly tending to it as the unique and incredible gift that it is.
• A believer in science, rationalism, and human progress as part of God’s divine plan for humanity.
• A believer in history and someone who understands that the Bible can be both divinely given and open to interpretation (no really)(if you’re confused, please talk to a knowledgeable traditional Jew)
• An ally to Jews, who stands against supercessionism and antisemitism in the church.

And in before regressive Christians come shouting at me that (1) what do I know, I’m a Jew and (2) no lol you can’t because of ___ reason:

My source is that I’ve personally met and talked to Christians of great faith and integrity - people who embody the closest forms of kindness I’ve seen to what Jesus himself advocated - who are each of these things.

It is 100% possible; you just choose to believe otherwise.

At this point I think it’s time to start preaching and claiming the moral high ground here.

Right-wing evangelical Christians want you to think that they’re the moral ones, when they EXPLICITLY defy the word of God. They routinely:

• Evade taxes intended to help the poor
• Oppress the foreigner
• Hoard wealth
• Hate their fellow in their hearts
• Destroy God’s creation that they were entrusted to steward, intentionally and recklessly as well as carelessly
• Cast the first stone
• Preach idolatry through the prosperity gospel and the American cult of nationalism
• Sacrifice their children to Molech through encouraging a culture of gun violence
• Commit true sexual abominations, such as rape and pedophilia, and/or cover these things up or engage in apologetics
• Encourage actual child and spousal abuse while calling it “traditional family values”
• Oppress and demean women, when their main guy uplifted and valued women outside of marginal roles
• Smugly quote scripture to satisfy their bigotries and to benefit themselves without caring about the true message
• Fail to acknowledge God as the True Judge by substituting their prejudices for God’s love and mercy

…….and plenty more. These are not just a few bad actors; this lifestyle is ENCOURAGED by this irresponsible and immoral cult. They are leading people astray into a life of sin and a culture of callous cruelty.

Is this the Christianity you want the world to know you by?

15 “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. 16 You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles? 17 Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Therefore by their fruits you will know them.

If you want to be a Christian,

1. Try to do what Jesus told you.
2. Throw out every verse, doctrine, culture, organization that presents any barrier to doing that.

The Pharisees saw him drinking wine and called him a sinner.

They saw him associating freely with sex workers and “undesirable” ethnic minorities and called him corrupt.

They saw him helping unhoused and disabled people and called him a law-breaker.

They saw him comforting mentally ill people and called him demonic.

The fact is that Jesus openly flaunted many of the verses that so many modern Christians cling to, for the sake of healing, uplifting, and comforting vulnerable people. We who follow Jesus must do the same.

*sighs Jewishly at this use of Pharisee*

🤦

I recognize that it would be problematic to label modern legalistic movements “pharisees” but like. Is there a better term for the actual sect I was referring to?

Hi @psykulor,

Thank you for your thoughtful engagement with this post. I will answer your question, but first I want to say that I hope this can be a learning opportunity.

[I would also request to my followers that you be kind in your responses to my teaching reblogs. This post attracted a LOT of attention, which is great but also means that it’s going to draw in a lot of folks who have not yet really unlearned a lot of antisemitism baked into the primary texts of Christianity and their interpretations over time, and I’d like to take this opportunity to talk about it with the interested demographic.]

So the problem here isn’t the word “Pharisee” but rather invoking the concept of Pharisees as the binary opposite of what Jesus taught. Jesus likely was a Pharisee. Or, at least, the Jews he taught and traveled amongst almost certainly saw him that way. Importantly, Pharisees may have been the religious authorities for the Jewish community, but they didn’t actually have real power. That would be the occupying Romans, who were pagan and too busy crucifying Jews for fun and to hold down rebellion to give even an iota of a shit about what the Pharisees (or, should I say, proto-rabbis) had to say.

Casting the Pharisees as the main enemy of Jesus and treating their relatively minor religious authority as having the same kind of major political power and hegemonic rule that right-wing Christians have in the US today is both inaccurate and antisemitic.

Unfortunately, this is an easy trap to fall into, because the New Testament itself does this in places. This is because it was written in retrospective after early Christianity had well and truly split from Judaism and had become a majority……. Roman gentile. Of course they’re going to soften the colonizing role of Rome and try to recast what were mostly either healthy “arguments for the sake of heaven” or legitimate intra-Jewish issues into their main guy rabble-rousing against The Establishment [who are Jews].

I strongly encourage you and any other progressive Christians to read this article to learn more about this topic:

Pharisees | Parables

Far from being arid legalists, Pharisees focused on creative and humane interpretations of Jewish law.

Parables

Progressive Christianity has a lot about it that is good and compelling, but Christianity will never be truly progressive until it has unpacked and reinterpreted the baked-in antisemitism that built and violently spread it. I’ve seen far too many otherwise excellent Christians - good, kind, and caring people by almost every measure - who fail really hard when it comes to allyship with Jews. There’s a lot to unpack and a lot to rework and rethink. I would ask that everyone who saw my first two posts really sit with this follow up and consider what things your Christianity, your church, and your community might need to do to get there. And it starts by listening to Jews when it comes to issues of antisemitism and taking seriously what we have to say about it.

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problematick:

pandabibble:

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prokopetz:

More inadvisable secret societies for your Dungeons & Dragons game:

• The Brotherhood of the Crimson Star, an apocalypse cult with a decentralised cell structure. Approximately half of the Brotherhood’s cells are working to accelerate the prophesied apocalypse, while the other half are working to prevent it. Owing to tight information control and erratic communication between cells, most members are completely in the dark about the schism, believing that all of their peers share their goals and and merely disagree in their methods.
   
  
• The Golden Owlbear Society, a philosophical collective of like-minded wizards and warriors dedicated to the improvement of mortal civilisation. In practice, they’re a social club for retired high-level adventurers who like to get high on pipeweed and debate political theory, and they almost never accomplish anything of note, but they’re treated as an existential threat by many nations owing to the absurdly high concentration of power they in theory represent.
   
  
• The Thousand Scales, a sorcerous cabal united by the fact that they’re all the illegitimate offspring of a single incredibly randy dragon. The half-human members serve as the organisation’s public face, while the greater part of its roster keep out of the public eye owing to their… eclectic parentage. The cabal’s leader appears to be half dragon, half horse, but guests should under no circumstances remark on this – it’s something of a touchy subject!
   
  
• The Vitalist League, ostensibly a band of freedom fighters against the reign of a terrible lich-king. In truth, nearly all of the League’s members are disguised undead infiltrators of various sorts. Most of the infiltrators are aware of this fact, but their superiors generally are not; due to the lich-king’s habit of regularly purging the upper ranks of his secret police, the infiltration’s operational history has been lost, and it’s unclear whether the “original” human-led League ever existed in the first place.
   
  
• The Honourable Company of Shoemakers, a trade guild that wields immense political power due to its deep connections and numerous highly trained operatives. Their secret is that they really are just a bunch of shoemakers, and have no ambitions or concerns beyond protecting the exclusivity of their contracts and ensuring that their members are allowed to ply their trades unimpeded by state interference. The trouble is, they’ll go to literally any lengths to achieve those goals!
  

(via jewishpangolin)

dabwax:

michaelnothing:

sourpatchbowl:

The silence was LOUD

My husband and me in the supermarket check out line.

A cashier in Lowes literally asked me and my partner if we were best friends 🥲

(via eighthdoctor)

elliottjpg:

elliottjpg:

Every six months or so my brain get possessed by my Lupin III monster AU again. This time I had both free time and motivation, so you get drawings!

Lupin: Vampire. He’s been around since the Meiji period. The Lupins are a line of vampire sires/sirees rather than a family (they’re also thieves).

Jigen: Inugami. In Japanese folklore they are dog spirits that possess people. For most of his life he thought he was a dysfunctional werewolf.

Goemon: Kami. He’s the spirit of the sword Zantetsuken. He can take human form and wield the sword himself. His real name is Ryusei (shooting star), he named his human persona after the famous samurai thief.

Fujiko: Jorogumo. In Japanese folklore they’re shapeshifting spider yokais who take the form of beautiful women to seduce men and eat them.

Zenigata: immortal by eating ningyo flesh. He figured the only way to keep up with an undead creature like Lupin was to become immortal.

I’ll put more detailed info in a reblog!

And when I say “more detailed info”, I mean a truckload of it, because I’ve have this AU for several years and it’s had time to brew.

Y'all are more than welcome to add your own ideas to this, and if you do I’d love to hear them!

Keep reading

(via bookshop-cryptid)

sillysnightcrawler:

after getting further into the lore (pulp lore) and finding who my inspirations are. not as stylized

looking at different variations made me realize that I prefer the collar up / black mouth covering over the visible scarf / red mouth covering. likely because of Alex Toth and Serial influence (and unknowingly how he’s supposed to look in the stories)

speaking of Toth influence

i’ll just go ahead and say that Toth’s design is one of my favorite designs of him because it’s 90% cloak, 10% man. and I also realized that I prefer that over detailed costumes so Toths is just perfect in every way

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nbsilvally:

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national-shitpost-registry:

lemondorp:

suinicide:

6qubed:

sindri42:

eternalfarnham:

cetaceanhandiwork:

justisdevan:

itsbenedict:

nonanalogue:

(via @itsbenedict)

direhuman:

me explaining to the other trainers that apricorns are unknown outside of Johto because of deliberate suppression by the Silph and Devon corporations to present artificial pokeballs as the only means of capturing pokemon and establish regional monopolies after they eliminate renewable sources

eternalfarnham replied to your post

you’re in the pocket of Big Ball, I see

there’s no pocket for me to BE in, there’s no LOBBYING involved, there’s no SUPPRESSION campaign because you don’t need one! traditional methods suppress themselves when you make modern pokéballs available. you might as well start accusing AT&T of deliberately suppressing the noble traditional art form of the goddamn semaphore.

not to mention OP demonstrates a total lack of understanding of the market realities of the pokéball industry- Silph and Devon are not monopolies, if they weren’t in constant competition their magic monster domination spheres wouldn’t cost two bucks a pop. the ball spec is a public standard, and Bill Masaki’s storage system based on that standard is an open-source project. they’re only the two largest players because they’re able to leverage economies of scale. you still get smaller operations like the Laverre City Poké Ball Factory, with better regional supply chains and local brand recognition, making room for themselves in the market. 

sm FUCKING h at y’all granola-crunching conspiracy theorists. you probably also believe Super Potions cause autism.

Ok, but it is a shame that artisanal balls are basically off the market now. Like, you have to ride the monorail and hike through a half dozen routes just to find someone willing to sell you a Fast Ball. Believe me, when your boss at the power plant needs five Electrodes by Tuesday you are not going to want to make the trip to Alola; you’re going to head on down to the Mart and get some Ultra Balls, which will do the trick but aren’t well tailored to the job.

I’m with you that modern catching techniques are better, not to mention more humane, but there genuinely is a loss from more niche balls becoming harder to find. Maybe someday the long slowpoketail of consumer demand will be met, but I wouldn’t hold my breath for that Shellder.

look y’all are missing the point. mass production of silph balls crowding out traditional apricorn craftsmanship is, if anything, more a side effect of the real problem: that capture artifacts are too easy to get your hands on these days. $2 basic balls are a problem. before modern ball tech you had to go to an artisan, yes, but part of their job was to care about who had the power to recruit pokémon from the wild, as a backstop against another Knight of Veilstone coming along. there was a time when you’d never lay a hand on a ball yourself until it was clear you respected pokémon, whether tame or in the wild. but now, a “pokémon journey” is open to practically every teenager, even if they’ve got not interest in treating their team with trust and love.

the worldwide rise in the last century of organized crime and apocalyptic cults who use pokémon as their muscle is a direct result of capture artifacts becoming a mass produced market commodity rather than a mechanism for preserving the sacred trust between humans and the wilderness. it’s a miracle that the powder keg hasn’t already gone off by now.

Oh that is rank historical revisionism - what, do you think artisans’ definitions of “respect” were constructed in a vacuum? We already had rhetoric as far back as the warring states period in Ransei about how only the soldierly classes, overwhelmingly descendants of nobility and taught from birth, had the intangible qualities necessary to “bond” with Pokémon. And when we start seeing apricorn balls develop in Johto, which borders Kanto - Kanto, where we know there’s been extensive cultural cross-contamination with Auroran and Dragnoran expeditions - surprise, suddenly only a small population has the intangible qualities necessary to use them, too.

That notion was, and remains, a tool to limit general access to Pokémon in the interest of maintaining class disparities. I mean, have we already forgotten the Aether Foundation’s pseudo-conservationist nonsense? Their attempt to manipulate natural resources and establish a power base in Alola, while they were modernizing and taking their place on the world stage, was founded on this exact rhetoric of “rescuing” Pokémon from local disenfranchised populations, as if taking Pokémon away from places like Po Town would improve things instead of increasing competition between trainers and decreasing safety.

Do you want more disillusioned kids joining gangs? Because that’s how you get Teams!

Artisanal balls and anyone who supports them are tools of the aristocracy to suppress the common folk. In the days when a ball could only be made by hand by an expert, only the wealthiest could afford pokemon, and as a result anyone not born into the “elites” was forced to be subservient to their “betters” for protection.

The release of the $2 pokeball meant that the balance of power shifted to the common citizens. If any child can wield the power of a god, the military and the government and the wealthiest businessmen have no power over them.

More than that, instead of power being determined by the wealth to acquire pokemon, power comes exclusively from the dedication, effort, and empathy required to train them to high levels and to maintain their loyalty. If a person simply buys their pokemon, then those pokemon will either stay at low levels forever, or refuse to obey the human because there is no respect between them; the most powerful people in the world are those who caught a critter at level 2-5 and then devoted their life to raising it into a world power.

And as a beautiful side benefit of this, standard of living has increased across the board. Since every household has at least one minor pokemon in the family and there are increasing numbers of professional, working pokemon joining cities and other civilized areas and working to improve them, every aspect of economy and industry has been enhanced by their supernatural capabilities. Electricity is generated cleanly and in abundance for everybody. Pollution is cleaned up almost completely and instantly. The production of farms, mines, and workshops is multiplied, even as safety standards improve. Yes, every few years another potential apocalypse comes about and needs to be prevented by a couple of brave teenagers, but outside of those incidents the world is damn close to utopia.

…that was all fascinating to read and I would like to see more like it, please

for instance; what the hell is in lemonade that makes it a more powerful healing alternative to regular potions

Opium

See, unlike in the real world, the Pokémon world has yet to ban cocaine in drinks.

this website is INCREDIBLE

(via lonniemachin)