Since the protestant revolts of the sixteenth century Blessed Mary has been a person whose role is disputed.

Some contend that Mary was a sinner like any other human being.
Some contend that Mary had other children after the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Some contend that Mary must have been saved by grace because she sinned.

But what does Blessed Mary say of herself?
In the Magnificat, also called the Song of Mary we read:
Luke 1:46-56

Set to music and with poetic license the song of Mary is sung thus in many a Catholic mass:
At least one contention may be put to rest on the basis of Blessed Mary's words.
Blessed Mary did indeed have a saviour.
Login to view embedded media

A growing measles outbreak in Columbus, Ohio, has sickened more than a dozen unvaccinated children and hospitalized nine of them, and local public health officials are seeking assistance from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

As of Friday morning, Columbus Public Health officials updated their investigation to include 19 confirmed cases, and more suspected, at 10 daycare centers and two schools.

“All cases are in unvaccinated children, and all but one are less than 4 years old. One child is 6 years old,” Newman said.

About 90% of unvaccinated people who are exposed to measles will become infected, according to Columbus Public Health, and about 1 in 5 people in the US who get measles will be hospitalized.

Must have been one of those fiery, but peaceful protest

President Biden’s granddaughter Naomi said her “I do’s” Saturday at the first White House wedding in nearly two decades.

The bride, 28, marched down the aisle on the South Lawn in a long-sleeve white gown with a high-necked lace collar. A cathedral-length veil billowed behind her in the chilly breeze.

About 120 guests shivered in 39-degree temperatures as the president’s eldest granddaughter — the daughter of scandal-scarred first son Hunter — wed fellow attorney Peter Neal, 25.

QV please:

It may come as a surprise to many students of the Bible that in the original Hebrew text the body of water the Israelites crossed when leaving Egypt is called yam suph, “Sea of Reeds,” not Red Sea (Ex 15:4, 22; Dt 11:4; Jos 2:10; 4:23; 24:6; Neh 9:9; Ps 106:7, 9, 33; 136:13, 15). Unfortunately, yam suph has been rendered “Red Sea” in nearly all of our translations, the Jerusalem Bible and the New Jewish Publication Society Hebrew Bible being notable exceptions.

Click to expand...

SOURCE

Do you believe this? have YOU been taught this in a classroom, church, or synagogue?

In addition, why does it say, "unfortunately"?

Unfortunate for whom?

My input:

• The old forum displayed a simple list of thread titles on the new threads page. Now it's in a Facebook-like format, which I find unappealing, clunky and way too large for effective forum reading. I don't want to read part of the OP, I only want to see thread titles and basic information about the thread. There is such a thing as too much, and I think the new version is trying to be something it's not—a social media app. The appeal of forums (forum websites in general), at least for me, has always been the way information is displayed efficiently and intuitively, so as to maximize the reading experience and minimize clutter; minimalism is best. When you get away from the classic forum format, you cause needless confusion and tediousness to the reader. I don't consider this progress, I consider it a step backward.
• The new round avatar display cuts off parts of your avatar that are meaningful, like text. It used to be square and not round. It's just an added inconvenience to have to recreate your avatar to fit.
• The alerts don't seem to want to clear like they should. It seems to work intermittently. The old forum would sometimes get stuck in a mode where the alerts wouldn't clear whatsoever, and kept popping up the same old alerts. The new forum seems to have an issue deciding whether to clear alerts or not.
• Overall, I find the new larger interface elements clunky and tedious to peruse. It's way too busy, and there are no thread lists anymore that get out of your way and let you view the threads at a glance.

EDIT:

• You can set list view, which is not so cluttered.
• Alerts do clear on page reload.

I want to share some thoughts I got when viewing the discussion about the annulment of "Roe vs. Wade", and what I could hear in German media about the midterm elections battle. The general impression is: The debate about abortion ("pro life" / "pro choice") is much more heated in the US than in Europe.

The main reason is the fact that "Roe vs. Wade" allows abortion on a rather extreme scale. Compare it to Germany:

• Before reunification, in East Germany (GDR) abortion was legal in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. In West Germany (FRG) there was on top of the 12-week-rule the requirement of an "indication" (mother in need, pregnancy after rape etc.).
• After reunification, and some debate, the law now says that an abortion is only legal, if the mother has visited a certified counselor (about alternatives to abortion, and support services for the mother), and if the abortion is done in the first twelve weeks of pregnancy.
• In the description above, I omitted the rule about abortion of a disabled child, which is legal up to the 20th week of pregnancy.

I am not content with this (I'm rather pro-life), but this would be off-topic here (not US Politics).

But I feel the debate in the US would be less heated if the options are not just a "Roe vs. Wade"-like ruling and no abortion at all.

Imagine someone promoting a "middle" ruling like one in other countries (e.g. Germany): Which political camp do you expect to present such a proposal? Do you think such a proposal would be good for your country?

Sometimes I use the chat room feature here and have a 27 inch computer monitor.

The new Chat box is kind of short and towards the top of my screen. Doesn't fill the bottom half of my screen. If that makes any sense. Kind of a minor cosmetic issue, possibly could be tweaked and improved.

I could post a screenshot to better illustrate ?

So recently I told my parents that I was (finally!) getting a job. I thought they would be happy to learn this, as my dad has been pressuring me to get a job for ages.

Instead, I got this weird reveal that my parents want me to get a job because they are "worried about what will happen when my dad dies." This does not make any sense, as I am currently not receiving financial support from my parents anymore. Also, my dad wants me to push for more money with my qualifications.

That's not why I'm getting the job. The reason I'm getting the job is because I want boating experience. Like most millennials, I'm looking for personal satisfaction and fulfillment from my job, not any sense of security. I'm not ambitious. I'm just being a deck hand on a ferry, and if the job pays enough to fund the gas for my car each week and pay for my food and health insurance, I'm going to be okay. I still have enough savings for the odd discretionary purchase or emergency.

If the job pays more than those basic expenses, that money will be saved. Has any of you had to navigate this sort of generational conflict around employment? How who you advise me to best deal with this? In the past, my dad has had the bad habit of sending me job offers he wants me to take that I don't want. How should I deal with this situation? I don't want to take a job I don't want out of my parents' fear, and dealing with the pressure of it has given me a lot of stress in the past. What boundaries should I set? Etc.

The title basically says it all. Recently I was reading a post by a single rapscallion that said he wanted "daily prayer" as part of his requirements for his lady friend. Unfortunately, I have never had a consistent daily prayer life, and perpetually struggle with gratitude towards my Creator. I am now looking to solve this problem, not to satisfy this person who believes in measuring women with yardsticks, but because it's probably something that I should be doing anyway.

What should I be praying for, or about, on a daily basis?

I prefer not seeing anything secular... so maybe a secular filter that covers all the categories including the "hot" New threads etc?

I have a terrible habit of rewatching TV shows that I've seen before a gazillion times whether they are good or bad because it's comforting noise that I don't have to pay much attention to. Recently I've been re-watching How I Met Your Mother (which is a terrible show, but such is my vice).

The other day I came across an episode where they watched the Star Wars trilogy every 5 years and would reflect on where they were at with life and daydream about what life would be like in 5 years when they watched it again. The futures were way off and ridiculous in many ways, but it got me thinking- if you were to allow yourself to fancifully daydream about where you'd want your life to be in 5 years (it does not have to be something you are working towards or think you will achieve), what would your 5 years from now life look like?

Hi all! So blessed to be here and hopefully expand my family of brothers and sisters in Christ. I’ve been walking with The Lord for 13 yrs now and everyday I learn more- about myself and about true Love.
I’m a mom of 3 young men, what a journey it’s been so far and it’s so exciting to watch them mature.
Really looking forward to some healthy discussions with you all.

Elon Musk, owner and CEO of Twitter, has begun reinstating accounts that were previously subject to lifetime bans for breaking the platform's rules.

Announced Friday, the first reinstated accounts belong to author Jordan Peterson, comedian Kathy Griffin, and conservative parody outlet The Babylon Bee.

"The new Twitter policy is freedom of speech, but not freedom to reach" the public, explained Elon Musk on his Twitter account.


"Negative or hateful tweets will be demoted and demonetized, so there will be no back-to-back ads or other revenue for Twitter. You won't find these tweets unless you specifically look for them, which is no different than the rest of the internet," he added.


Thoughts?


I would say that there should also be a push to reinstate some accounts that were banned for "vaccine hesitancy".

As much as I go hard on the actual anti-vaxxers, there were some who got that label, and were banned, for topics surrounding aspects of it that NBC and Washington Post are running articles about now that everyone has let their "covid politics" guard down a little.

Doesn't it seem weird that Hosea 6:1-2 predicted when Israel would be restored after their fall In 70 AD? It also seems to predict the second coming because Jesus was crucified around 30 AD which would make the first day 30 AD to 1030 AD, The second day 1030 to 2030 AD and Israel was restored in the 1960s fitting in with Hoseas prophecy. And it makes the 3rd day 2030 to 3030 AD. So Jesus should return between 2030 and 3030 AD (the 3rd day).

It's a long shot but this prophecy makes sense.

We used to have a list of the latest threads being created -

Also the most popular threads were listed.

Are these functions still available ?

Have you ever introduced friends to each other who then replaced you with their friendship? How did you deal with the hurt from that if it didn't get addressed?

Following World Wars of the 20th century, there is a collective paradigm shift that presented the system of liberal democracy of the United States, and the west generally, as a kind of sacred center for the protection and promotion of universal human rights for the entire world. The "Shining City on a Hill" enlightening the nations of the world with its system of liberal democracy.

The Church enters into this through the stream of Liberation Theology and the Social Gospel. This was the belief that Christians could begin building the Kingdom of God here on earth now through governmental social reforms. The command to feed the hungry and help the needy was gradually transformed and merged into a rapidly growing beauracratic system of social planning and social engineering.

The result appears to be a mainstream church that is spiritually fastened to 'sacred democracy'... where the spreading of Democracy and the Gospel has become syncretized into one common mission. Light spills into the world when a foreign dictator's palace is bombed by NATO airplaines, the same as it might when the Gospel is preached to some distant tribe.

A kind of universal "Moral Therapeutic State" is formed by a syncretic mixture of Christianity and Secular Democracy.

When liberal-minded Christians get upset about the prospect of "Christian Nationalism", it's not because they dislike the idea of mixing Christianity with the Nation-State, it's because *they already did it themselves* and would rather a competing Christian sect not try and overturn the syncretic religious order they've already established.

The Messianic figure of Christ becomes detached from the Bible, and floats freely in a kind of Gnosticism. Jesus becomes a "personal experience" for each individual, detached from the scripture that contradicts the sacred freedoms granted by the sacred Democratic State, freedoms such as the promotion of homosexuality and gay marriage or the individual right to kill one's child. This gnostic Jesus stands next to a deified George Washington... the light of the Gospel shines beside the equally bright torch of humanistic freedom blazing from the Statue of Liberty.

Curious to read others' thoughts on this subject.

It's not good, it's harmful even, for one person to post a dozen or more new threads every day, in that it tends to crowd out other new threads by other people, some of whom might be making urgent prayer requests or such, say about 20 hours since we have last visited the site, so that if one person has during that 20 hours made 12 or 15 or more new threads, that urgent prayer request can become basically invisible to most people looking for new threads.

Of course, it's not only urgent prayer requests that can be made invisible by one person posting 15 new threads, but even just ordinary fellowship threads someone makes, where we have a chance to join in and practice "love one another" together, so the problem isn't only about what is urgent, but also about what is best.

To steal a phrase from The Clash - "Should I stay or should I go"
We hear lots of news lately about Elon Musk's heavy hand blazing a trail of destruction through his newly acquired company Twitter.
He fired half his staff and with his heavy hand he has been monitoring and spying on staff internal conversations on private slack channels and firing people that have said negative things about him.
He has demanded people to work in office and to commit to long hours at high intensity or leave. Early reporting is suggesting that the majority of staff are choosing to leave.
Way to go Elon, how to, within the space of two weeks turn a workforce from highly engaged, passionate, valued, proud and excited, to disgusted, disengaged, unvalued, disappointed and wanting to leave.

Anyway, this thread isn't about staff. This is about users and how they might be answering the question "Should I stay or should I go"
There doesn't seem to be much media focus on this.
We have heard about the Blue Check fiasco, where user's could trust that celebreties and people and organisations with official positions had been verified by Twitter and so the messages coming from accounts with the Blue Check could be trusted as coming from the people and organisations that user think these are coming from. But now with the Blue Check just meaning that a subscription fee has been paid, now users have no idea who is saying what.
But other than this Blue Check, we don't really hear much about the impact on users.
Are users staying or leaving?

After Elon Musk’s abrupt takeover of Twitter, many people saw and heard so many SEOs and marketers take the bold but necessary step of leaving the platform.

But a recent poll that was conducted in this regard proved that users are not ready to leave just yet.

The bizzareness of the above narrative is that from that linked to poll, 21% have said that they have left already (which is massive) and a further 12% have said that they are planning to leave. This makes 33% of the user base (at least those responding to the poll) have said that they have already left or are planning to leave. Which completely contradicts the article which says "proved that users are not ready to leave just yet"

Twitter is struggling to keep its most active users - who are vital to the business - engaged, underscoring a challenge faced by the Tesla chief executive as he approaches a deadline to close his $44 billion deal to buy the company.
These "heavy tweeters" account for less than 10% of monthly overall users but generate 90% of all tweets and half of global revenue. Heavy tweeters have been in "absolute decline" since the pandemic began, a Twitter researcher wrote in an internal document titled “Where did the Tweeters Go?”
...interest in news, sports and entertainment is waning among those users. Tweets on those topics, which have helped Twitter burnish an image as the world’s "digital town square," as Musk once called it, are also the most desirable for advertisers.

So it seems that Twitter was facing some big problems (even before Musk's takeover) of the active users becoming disengaged and less active and moving towards links and conversations that are less appealing to advertisers.

Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter has some in Hollywood heading for the exit.

"Grey's Anatomy" creator Shonda Rhimes and others in the entertainment industry say they plan to quit the platform now that it is owned by Musk, a self-proclaimed "free speech absolutist" who has vowed to make sweeping changes — including potentially reversing the ban on former President Donald Trump.

"Not hanging around for whatever Elon has planned. Bye," Rhimes tweeted to her nearly 2 million Twitter followers Saturday afternoon, two days after Musk closed his $44 billion deal to purchase the service.

I don't know what the above means. Is this just a few anecdotes. Are all celebreties thinking this way, or just some? Are celebretities significant to keeping Twitter interesting for other users????

Anyway, I'm not a Twitter user, I don't have an account. I am just interested in whether Musk is destroying this platform or not. Twitter is obviously a very significant platform to many people.

I feel badly that you all are getting so much snow. Looks like you all accumulating it really quick!

Attorney General Merrick Garland plans to announce Friday that he has appointed a special counsel to oversee investigations into the retention of national defense information at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort and key aspects of the criminal investigation into January 6, 2021, according to a senior Justice Department official.

Well, that should end all complaining about the political nature of these investigations!

Login to view embedded media
I've been thinking about this "Great Reset" and the World Economic Forum (WEF)(headed by Charles Schwab) lately. The problems I see in businesses today (and I feel others are realizing now too) is that a lot of them totally ignore the needs of the low and medium wage worker. So if the world's wealthiest business owners are going to lay out a plan so that all people will be better off and happier then these wealthy business owners need to know what make us low and medium wage workers happier in the workplace. It seems only right that low and medium wage workers should contribute to the plan of the so called "Great Reset". So here are my lists of things that would make me a happier worker.

Every worker entering the workforce will get good, affordable health insurance. We don't need to have centralized government healthcare. Companies that have over 200 workers should be able to give their workers different options of healthcare. Companies that have less that 200 workers would work with other companies with less than 200 workers to buy good quality health insurance for their workers.

Worker's should be given the necessary tools (and fairly up to date) to accomplish their jobs adequately. Workers should be equipped with fairly up to date computers (if necessary), sitting and furniture, vehicles, training, handheld devices, first aid supplies and so on.

A good wage so he/she can afford to live on their own.

At least one week of paid vacation a year and one week of sick leave a year.

No part time work status unless the worker is the one who requests it.

The chance to save for one's retirement.

If the WEF is going to set the way we workers work they need our input. A lot of us are tired of others making the rules without our input. If we are equals in this society then we need to have equal say in things.

1) I find the FTX scandal very amusing, especially that many Democrats love to talk about regulating stocks, business, people "paying their fair share" etc. but can be in bed with one of the biggest abusers of the system and this guy seems to have gotten really far by being a big Democratic fund doner and seemed to use the promise of much, much greater donations to get the benefit of the doubt before the wheels fell off of his operation. Not only this but the FTX founder was one of the major advisors to regulating such people that they sought counsel from.


2) It also is amusing that this entrepreneur went out of his way to exploit woke language to get the best coverage from the press, liberal politicians, and liberals on social media (A point he also later admitted too in some of his personal online correspondence). This kind of thing reminds me of
some pet areas of mine in psychology, such as: social psychology, neurolinguistic programming, and the power of framing various topics.


3) Besides this I also found it amusing that House Representative Maxine Waters (who took a photo with him that was soon deleted off her web sites and social media accounts soon after the scandal broke) tried to spin this as a Bipartisan scandal when it is really a mostly Democratic one. So far, we only know of one Republican took money the FTX Crypto currency founder. I suspect if you actually audit the money of who gets what the money going to even that candidate is going to be very low compared to all the money going to Democratic candidates.


(And if you don't know what I'm talking about... go Google FTX, not posting any links lest I miss something forbidden in the TOS, nor do I want to take the time to vet content when people can just google something themselves)