gotta do a little preaching on a thing I keep thinking about, be warned this is one of them God-bothering THREADs there's a thing that's popular among ultraconservative evangelical types right now that seeks to ally Jesus of Nazareth with [what they conceive of, not entirely accurately, as] traditional western concepts of strength and masculinity

I do in fact have a story for you this year, too, but I'll tell you at the outset, it's probably gonna land on a note more of contemplative reflection than full-throated affirmation, I'll do what I can I've talked before about early spring '86 in Portland, a time which I mark as the end of one arc. somewhere in the year or two before that I'd lost my way almost completely. friends saw it and couldn't help;

so I was washing potatoes last night when I got excited it was just one of those moments, you know. I was getting dinner together and I looked at the ingredients coming together on the counter

please do not pile on the original author though because! she is almost certainly right if you're trying to quote a big-name artist who has sold their publishing! loose thread here one way artists can make money is to sell their publishing. what that means is that whoever buys the rights to it -- sometimes only for ten years or fifteen or whatever -- then gets to set the terms of its use

I don't lack the language for much, but the gratitude I feel in my heart for the well-wishing I've been receiving since yesterday leads me to that point. however will I not try to make some words of this feeling? yes I will, herewith a THREAD on the Christmas spirit our Christmas story is kind of a miracle of syncretism -- it attempts to braid several mythical threads together from extremely disparate traditions, but manages to stick the landing -- to craft a story that resonates in us

I honestly have a lot to say about this, and it goes a couple of directions. In the nursing program I attended, we had great teachers and many great young nurses. But pedagogically, the model was absolutely "teaching to the test"

https://twitter.com/WilGafney/status/1437019923956609024

What that means is there was information you were going to need to pass the state boards, and, culturally in the program & within the curriculum, the assumption was that you wanted this information strictly for the purposes of passing the exams, and, later, the state boards.

Just making dumb food polls while feeling despair about the state of masking and elevator capacities as we tour. Here, a thread that will probably get religious as it goes, fair warning. We’re staying as isolated as we can out here. But we have to be in the world sometimes – we are all vaccinated, and we wear our masks. But many aren’t vaxxed, and many won’t wear masks, because they say it would infringe on their freedom.

You can have "my personal choice is paramount" or you can have Jesus, but you can't have both. Think. Think for literally one minute about Calvary. Think about the life of Christ, His poverty. Think about His answer when asked "what is the first and greatest commandment": how He begins by saying, well, love God, duh, this is obvious,

I think about this a lot, because of how badly it speaks of us culturally that we have allowed Ronald Reagan to be anywhere near a figure about which we can disagree. An absolute villain, a person who made this country worse in every way

https://twitter.com/mountain_goats/status/1398235087213412357

To enumerate everything harmful he did during his eight years in office would require a life‘s work. But that even when you point these things out, you get people whose position is “ok, but we made a lot of money!” is one of the most enduring wounds of his tenure

like not to go off too hard but spiritually, I agree with the "generally, don't party too hard when people die" position. people are complex. people do good and bad and they have moms & dads & kids, judge not lest ye also be judged is a real scripture and I take it seriously

having a cup of tea while waiting for a shortening / molasses / boiling water / brown sugar slurry to cool enough to add yeast to it, so hey, howzabout a quick sermon about the nature of God and how we do or don't see it reflected in the godly, and in poseurs? a thread: I have to start with heavy sticky theological stuff that I personally am underqualified to fully parse so bear with me. There are many ways of understanding omniscience,

this is an anecdotal data point but it's a thing I always remember -- in December of 2008 I was boarding a plane somewhere and some dude in his fifties ahead of me was talking politics to whoever he was with, and he said "I've never seen this level of anger in this country." His position was that the incoming administration had already caused so much rage that that rage needed to be addressed, respected, taken into account

so just so I have this one right, the anonymous posts on an image board, claiming to be from a government insider that alleged a behind-the-scenes network to take down cabal of monster satanists who control government, the posts that alleged every public fuck-up was a wink-to-the-camera to be understood by the faithful that everything is under control, that there's a plan, devised by the utter genius with *checks notes* six Chapter 11 bankruptcies on his record, just failure after failure,

People look for relatively cheap coincidences to hear the Voice of God, but God is a player of the long game, and does not favor minor effects I see God's mighty Hand in Georgia today

and the thing that makes @SenTedCruz 's position here ~so~ craven, ~so~ dishonest, is the normalization of sedition it represents. "a few senators always object," he says. "it's actually good for all of us!"

https://twitter.com/mountain_goats/status/1345430874049884161

he contrasts this with ~the percentage of Americans who believe there was substantial voter fraud.~ can we get a percentage of how many of these Americans actually know anything about the question or who expressed any concern about it before their candidate lost?

I'll tell you a story about new years when I was 19 one day I woke up and there was a hole in the knee of my jeans and when I got up to walk my hip began clicking with each step, a problem that would continue for years,

this, and the news about the vaccine refusal rate among southern California nurses, has me really down; there's the obvious "what is wrong with these people" response, but, for me, after that, there's the certainty that the failure is more general

https://twitter.com/lachlan/status/1344638999718211584

when I was in nursing school, we learned about vaccines, about infection control, about vectors and clean procedure and importantly about medical history, about what it was like before we knew about viruses, before the stunning advance of science in the 19th & 20th centuries

I dig the Christmas season as much as the next Dad, you know, but does it not dawn on any of these very hold-up-the-Bible crucifix-in-their-twitter-bio people that the gospels don't make mention of a birthdate even once? I mean this is pedantry, obviously, and pointless -- where's the gotcha here? we celebrate the birthdays of the people we love, this is an occasion to honor the birthday of a Person who gives His life for us and for our salvation, I get it

I have a really stupid story to tell

https://twitter.com/seph_lawless/status/1330192380058865669

It's 1978. I'm eleven years old, and I read the @latimes voraciously on Sundays. Can't get enough of the Calendar section. (I want to love the book review at this time, but most of the books they're writing about are over my head.)

...but, vide the other videos in Bobby's thread, these dudes are all-in on Moloch. "Lockdown didn't work," they say. (We didn't lock down.) Feed Moloch the corpses of your countrymen lest his wrath descend on our P/E ratios

https://twitter.com/mountain_goats/status/1326870599256453120

"we won't recover from the devastation lockdown will do to the economy," they say, people who have only ever slept in comfort

1/5 the thing is, this is not a revolutionary vanguard kind of take

https://twitter.com/CaseyNuge/status/1319386312810635266

2/5 we are the wealthiest country in the history of the entire world