The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) issued a report that surveyed reproductive-age adults and recommended “reproductive autonomy” as a solution to global fertility rate decline, a solution that received pushback from pro-family experts.

The UNFPA, along with YouGov, surveyed more than 14,000 adults in 14 countries: the United States, India, Germany, Hungary, Sweden, Italy, Mexico, Brazil, Thailand, South Korea, Indonesia, Nigeria, Morocco, and South Africa.

The report, “The Real Fertility Crisis: The Pursuit of Reproductive Agency in a Changing World,” found that about 39% of people in the survey who want children said financial limitations affected their family size, with many citing a lack of job security, housing limitations, and child care options as reasons. About 19% of respondents said fears about the future contribute to their expectation of having fewer children. Almost one-third reported they or their partner had an unexpected pregnancy.

About 45% of respondents were not sure whether they would have their desired number of children or did not answer the question. Only 37% responded that they expect to have the amount of children they want.

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Hi! I'm a 21-year-old college student who is truly getting into Christianity for the first time. I just started my TRUE journey recently, but was raised Christian and never truly believed. I have dealt with anxiety and other mental health issues for most of my life, and I feel like my experiences with those have significantly contributed to my previous doubt in Jesus. I have slowly started to heal and correct the sins I was making previously to overall become a better person and a thoughtful, loving Christian. I am starting to read the Bible for the first time in my life and have tons of questions, which led me here. I am looking for people I can connect with who have a deeper understanding of the Bible and Christianity to help guide me on my path and answer the questions I have to the best of their ability. If you are interested in connecting and maybe even acting as a mentor to me, please reach out. I need all the help I can get. Thank you so much, and I look forward to my time on the forums and can't wait to connect with others!

Look who's talking
Badly about me
He tells me that I am
A religious fanatic
That is wrong
Because that is not me
Also he doesn't know me that
Well
That is the truth
I was born a Christian
And I will die as a
Christian
Yes I pray every night
For my Father
Before I sleep
It only takes a few
Minutes to do it

There is an Australian class action against Tesla due to what is known as "phantom braking".

Some Tesla drivers have reported phantom braking while their car is in autopilot mode, which, according to Tesla, "enables your car to steer, accelerate and brake automatically within its lane".

It is not entirely autonomous driving, but you can take your foot off the accelerator while the car drives along at a set speed and slows down for other vehicles.

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The company also maintains that autopilot is designed to make driving safer, but in the US, Tesla has been sued over several deadly crashes in which the system was enabled.

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We've got a hybrid Toyota. We've had it for about 18 months. It has a similar system except they call it "adaptive cruise control" and "lane centering". If I set the cruise control, the car slows down if the car in front slows down and then picks up speed if the gap opens us. Likewise it will steer itself in the centre of marked lanes if I push the centering button.

One minor issue is that if there is pull over bay on the side of the road, and the left hand white line dives off to allow for the bay with no dotted line as a "barrier", the car will temporarily try to veer left to stay right in the centre of the "lane" (we drive on the left in Australia). But it only lasts a second as we go past the bay in a very short time.

So far we haven't had any problems with "phantom braking" touch wood. Apparenlty other brands have had issues, including Toyota, but it seems to be a persisent problem for Tesla.

Other Manufacturers Report Issues​

While AEB systems are designed to improve safety on the road, issues have been reported with vehicles from several different automotive and truck manufacturers.

In addition to Tesla and Nissan, other manufacturers reporting issues with AEB systems include:

• Subaru: In 2019, Subaru announced a recall of more than 1.3 million vehicles due a system problem that could cause the AEB to activate unexpectedly. The recall affected several models, including the Forester, Outback and Crosstrek.
• Toyota: Toyota has issued several recalls related to AEB system issues in various models, including the Camry and the RAV4. In some cases, the AEB system failed to activate when it should have, while in other cases, it activated unexpectedly.
• Ford: In 2020, Ford issued a recall of 600,000-plus vehicles because the AEB system activated randomly and without cause. The recall affected several models, including the Fusion, Edge and Lincoln MKX.
• American Honda: In 2019, Honda recalled more than 118,000 CR-V models due to a software issue that could cause the AEB system to engage unexpectedly.
• General Motors: GM has also issued several recalls related to incidences when the AEB system either unexpectedly activated or failed to activate when needed in various models, including the Chevrolet Malibu, GMC Acadia and Cadillac XT5.

Click to expand...

I do remember driving a Mercedes Sprinter van for my job which tended to go into "Go slow" mode due to road surfaces. There might have been a rough patch or some potholes when I braked or cornered. I assume the car's computer thought it could be dangerous and it went "go slow". Even that could be risky as I might have been trying to turn right across fast moving oncoming traffic and the van decided to slow down which meant it took longer to cut across the oncoming traffic.

I'm sorry, but I just can't get away from the idea that mankind is God's "experiment". Look at the proof. First, Gods seems to be caught off guard when Adam and Eve sin and all of mankind from then on are considered by God to be sinners. Then comes the time of Noah (Genesis 6:6-7) 6 "The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. 7 So the Lord said, I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them". But instead of wiping us out, He continues His "experiment" by allowing Noah and his family to live and replenish the earth. So, the earth is replenished but most of mankind continues to sin and ignore God. Moving up to the time of Jesus, He makes this statement: John 3:16 - "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life". So, God goes from "I regretted that I have made human beings" to "He so loved the world". That is confusing.

I believe in God and the Trinity, but I just don't get His plan for mankind. Today there are billions of people who are lost, and I just don't understand why He continued His experiment, only to send billions to annihilation. I try to visualize the day of judgement with billions standing before Jesus and that one person in the midst of those billions who will be judged. Can you visualize it? How can that one person be judged in the midst of billions? It just boggles my mind. And yes, I know that God does things that are above our mind, but some things just don't make sense.

I am having some very unpleasant experiences in a certain area of my life. Please pray for peace of mind. Thank you.

Hello, it has been a while since I’ve been on these forums. I come asking for prayer and wisdom. After almost a decade as an Eastern Orthodox, this Sunday my wife and I, along with our two youngest children, will be received into the Catholic Church. Please pray for our remaining three children. Two are outside of valid sacraments. The oldest remains in Orthodoxy but is greatly distressed. I thank you for your prayers.

If you have any wisdom to share, please feel free to do so.

So.. I feel kinda dumb.
I've heard the song for years and years and years, but because I usually don't pay attention to lyrics in music, much less in heavy metal music because a lot of it is.. well.. bad, or at least perceived to be bad/evil

But I got the inkling that I wanted to listen to Creeping Death by Metallica today.. I don't know why.. I just did. That particular song.

and .. I caught lyrics about Pharaoh and slaves and first born, where I normally just let words gloss over without paying attention and.. realized..
it's a song about the first Passover, told from the Angel of Death's point of view.

almost 30 years of hearing that song and never knew that.

but normally I've been conditioned that Heavy Metal is all Anti-Christian and Satan worship music and whatever so I usually just kinda blank it out. I know a lot of the genre in total, is a little misunderstood.. being that the genre is musically supposed to fit the same niche as horror movies. Occult themes and violence are all over heavy metal music, for the same reason that they're in horror movies. Not because they like those things or worship them, but because those themes are scary. An Iron Maiden song "Number of the Beast" gets a lot of flack like it's a devil worship song but it's about the Omen movies (horror movies about the antichrist) and a nightmare that their lead songwriter had after watching one of the movies. He wasn't worshiping the devil or antichrist, he was scared of them.
Though that said a lot of secular musicians in general are anti-Christianity mostly out of ignorance of what Christianity is, because they've been presented it as a means of controlling the masses, Christianity to them is a set of rules that if you don't follow you go to hell forever and God is always angry and petty.

We all know that's not the truth of it, but they basically don't.

But it is interesting when secular music makes biblical reference. In this case I just didn't realize it for decades.

Professor John Senior, my godfather and one of the professors of the famed Integrated Humanities Program at the University of Kansas, was a master of hyperbole. He once hinted to us, his students, that we should just go home and smash our television sets. Perhaps he didn’t mean this literally, but he suggested that this was something we should consider. I know of at least one fellow student who took him at his word and dropped his 19-inch Motorola black and white television set out of the window of his fourth-floor dorm room onto the concrete alley below.

Today, the lightweight plastic screen would barely make a sound when it hit the pavement. But in the 1970s, the dozens of sealed tubes (this is why some still call the TV “the tube”) exploded with a thunderous noise. It was so satisfying. So cathartic.

TV was a relatively new technology at the time; it had taken a generation or so to begin to realize what it was doing to us. Instead of being active, seeking, critical engagers with the real world, filled with wonder and joy, we were becoming lazy, slack-jawed, and flat-souled accepters of an often false or incomplete mediated version of reality.

The sound of a TV exploding on the pavement helped mark a new phase of life for us. One in which we made a commitment – a commitment deeply related to our faith (I converted to Catholicism through influence of the IHP) – to refuse to allow this technology to shape us in these negative and distorting ways.

Today, we are faced with a similar problem, but on a wildly greater scale. Artificial Intelligence and related technologies will now be able to use our reliance on screen-delivered mediating technologies and throw us into something close to total confusion about what is real and what isn’t.

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To get the real story about what's happening in LA, listen to Jimmy Kimmel's monologue on June 10th. He lives in Los Angeles as do the hundreds in his studio audience and his staff. They showed pictures all over LA of people shopping, eating at street vendors, lining up for Disney movies and just having a grand old time. They were all completely unworried except for the unnecessary military escalation. Kimmel said that there were so many people living in Los Angeles far longer than he had, working, contributing to the community, with deep roots and strong ties but without green cards or citizenship. He then said that people with masks were abducting them because what they were doing could not be called anything but abduction. Of course these were interspersed with ridiculously incoherent statements by Trump, about cleaning up the forests almost all of which are actually federal Forest Parklands, and. about the water that was being sent to the ocean while the forest fires were raging, another complete lie. I guess there are people as incoherent as he is to whom this makes sense but everything he said in those clips was absolute nonsense. My sympathies to the people of Los Angeles. They deserve a president who is on their side and who is not a national embarrassment.

Baal






What if Baal was never a being to begin with, however more of a common act? A verb? Or even a metaphor for everyday living and understandings of our life on earth as we know it?

“God is not angry at us for living” ...

As long as the cherubs in Heaven keep saying “Holy, Holy, Holy.” I’m not going to disbelieve what I just thought about a certain observation on a FB religion group. The word “lord” is an alternate word for “Baal”. Then tonight I was compelled to discern the fear mongering into common sense. Baal means idol worship, but even an engine is an idol which is my concern as well as I come to faceting a comprehensive understanding before the fear pulls people into too much panic over Yahweh who told John in the writing of 4:18 that he did not want him to teach a religion of fear.

I’m not trying to attack religion either; it is necessary for connecting to God. But faith tells me my only Lord is Yeshua, and/or Christ Jesus. We live a life of enough fear from the Baal of doubt in this world. Your faith keeps you on this forum because you believe the way I do on that matter. I’m pretty sure the people in that group mean well but they are missing a key point. Lord Jesus should always be the Lord Christ.

We are balancing a conflict of fear and doubt. I learned a short not to long of a time ago how to avoid taking matters into my own hands instead of trusting in God. I’m anything but stagnant, but there is way too much fearmongering going on FB right now from a few hotshot Christian groups. I posted this diagram there earlier, but it got auto deleted by FB AI, this is what I was looking into when I was delving for answers on Google...



I have also realized that if this is true that then we are also needing church at this very moment, and I know definably I would be hard pressed to pray the same way a Seraphim does...

I've heard this claim thrown around. But who would be the false prophet, and would satan be the author of the quran, the head of the unholy trinity who tries to be like God, while Muhammad tries to be like Jesus?

"Yesterday, an illegal alien from Honduras brandished a weapon and assaulted federal agents and officers who were doing their job: protecting American citizens, the public and businesses who are being victimized through identity fraud," ICE acting Director Todd Lyons said Wednesday.

Our federal agents and officers have been put at much greater risk due to the huge increase in numbers under the Biden regime.

Comedian Roseanne Barr recently claimed that her career-ending tweetfrom 2018 likening former Obama presidential advisor Valerie Jarrett to an ape was an idea that came to her from God.

"The way I feel about it is that God told me to do what I did, and it was a nuclear bomb," Barr said during an interview with Variety published last week.

"The day of my tweet, over 2 million Americans Googled Valerie Jarrett and the Iran deal. And that was my intent. So, whatever."

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Results of a new Gallup poll reveal an increase in the number of Americans who support policies that prioritize sex over gender identity.

The polling firm surveyed 1,003 U.S. adults from May 1–18, asking them a number of questions related to sex and gender with a margin of sampling error of 4%. When compared with the 2021 and 2023 Gallup research surveys on sex and gender, the new study revealed an increase in the number of Americans who prefer using sex as an identifier rather than “gender identity.”

The most recent poll called “Values and Beliefs” focused on two specific policies related to which team transgender athletes should compete on and how they should identify themselves on government documents.

The results showed that 69% of U.S. adults surveyed believe that “trangender athletes should only be allowed to play on sports teams that match their birth gender.” Of the sample, 90% of Republicans agreed with this statement, 72% of independents, and 42% of Democrats.

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I have an upcoming job interview.

Please pray for me

God bless

It wears heavy on me. My dad has had four people close to him die in the last decade. His childhood best friend died in the last few months. His good/best friend died some years ago. Another one of his very good friends died after that person. His brother also died in the last few years. And now, just yesterday, my parents' dog died. I've never seen my dad so sad. He tries to still joke around like his usual self, but I can't imagine the kind of loss he is going through. I hate to see my dad in pain. My father is one of the greatest Christian men I know. He is completely selfless. He only ever thinks of others. He does almost all the work around the house. He gets my mom what she wants. He takes her on vacations as well as taking me and my brother out on vacations. This all comes out of the money that he manages. He is VERY generous with his finances, giving generously to missionaries and to his church. He is also a man of great integrity. He is the sort of person who will pay his bills before he buys food. Not exaggerating. He is an evangelist and has brought many of his friends to the Lord. He has been faithful to his wife, his family, and the Lord for all his life. Please pray that God comforts him with His Spirit. Thank you.

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee told Bloomberg News that Washington does not see room for a Palestinian state at the moment.

Huckabee told Bloomberg that U.S. support for a Palestinian state in the current climate has cooled.

"Unless there are some significant things that happen that change the culture, there's no room for it," Huckabee told the news outlet during an interview in Jerusalem.

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Olympic gymnast Simone Biles has apologized to All-American swimmer Riley Gaines after criticizing her advocacy for women's sports on social media over the weekend.

In a Tuesday X post, Biles said that she has always believed "competitive equity & inclusivity" are essential in sports, saying that the current system "doesn't adequately balance these important principles." The Olympic medalist cited her frustration over this as the reason why her exchange with Gaines became heated. She apologized for making things "personal" with Gaines.

"These are sensitive, complicated issues that I truly don't have the answers or solutions to, but I believe it starts with empathy and respect. I was not advocating for policies that compromise fairness in women's sports," Biles wrote. "My objection is to be singling out children for public scrutiny in ways that feel personal and harmful."

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A Japanese A6M found in a cave in Florida. Nesher meets Tango Seven in a project called "Bolt Cutter" Planning of flying into the Atlantic on the search for the temporal vortex in the area of the Bermuda Triangle. Tango finally hands Nesher the KJV Bible he's bought in his name back in 2017; when Nesher was being decerned by Tango as an angel of God. What either of them will do next only time has the answer.

Last rural Democrat in Kentucky senate leaves party, growing GOP supermajority​

California sanctuary politicians and rioters are defending heinous illegal alien criminals including child pedophiles and other violent criminal illegal aliens at the expense of Americans' safety.

WASHINGTON - Today, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released more information about some of the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens arrested during the ongoing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operation in Los Angeles. These arrests occurred on June 8 despite violent riots and assaults on ICE law enforcement.

“These heinous criminals, including child abusers and pedophiles, are some of the illegal aliens arrested yesterday in Los Angeles. Why do Governor Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass care more about violent criminal illegal aliens than they do about protecting their own citizens?” said Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin. “These rioters in Los Angeles are fighting to keep rapists, murderers, and other violent criminals loose on Los Angeles streets. Instead of rioting, they should be thanking ICE officers who every single day wake up and make our communities safer.”

Below is a list of some of the violent criminal illegal aliens arrested in ICE’s Los Angeles Operation on Sunday:

I keep thinking about someone that im not close to but from what ive seen of them i think id get on with them.
Now when i think of them i feel the Holy Spirit draw close to me.
Is that spiritually significant ?
Is there something spiritual going on?
Thanks
Adrian

Nothing to see here don’t believe what you read and certainly don’t believe any of the videos. And some people will actually believe her.