Publicola
8mo ago
I teach a Chronicles of Narnia class for middle school, and I recommend & assign students to read the books in publication order:
- Lion, Witch Wardrobe
- Prince Caspian
- Dawn Treader
- Silver Chair
- Horse and His Boy
- Magician's Nephew
- Last Battle
Publicola
8mo ago
As opposed to the Romans, who were quite fond of the Christians they murdered...?
Publicola
1yr ago
I'm the same, though in my case 'recently' means within the last 24 hours; when I was checking the site yesterday there were no such formatting/column oddities. (To clarify: by default the comments now take up about 1/3 of my screen, with the other two thirds reserved for a single comment thread that starts at the top of the page, above the 'The Motte Needs You', by the 'New'/'Top' drop-down. If I minimize that single comment thread, it shrinks to taking up only 1/4 of the screen, with the other 3/4 used for the normal set of comments). No idea what's going on or why.
Publicola
1yr ago
From what I can tell, the two women ended up paying Avellone a seven-figure settlement, which is just... wow. At least $1 million for an out-of-court settlement, plus lawyer's fees paid by the accusers... Avellone must have had some bombshell evidence that would have made a court case a complete cake-walk. So at least the women in this case did pay the piper, even if it wasn't jail time.
Publicola
1yr ago
If it it 'standard operating procedure' for 'average Christian peasants', can you show me another example of a dog saint? Or do I need to point you to the many many irrationalities of our modern secular world before you'll agree that the plural of anecdote is not data, and that you can't generalize from a single example that was notorious even in its own day?
Publicola
1yr ago
The formula for the Trinity is 'three persons, one Godhead' (that is, divine nature). So the Trinity maintains that the Son is a *different *person than the Father, but they both share the same single divine nature.
Publicola
1yr ago
It depends on the era of 'medieval', and way more than you think. Medieval community life was heavily influenced by the sacred calendar -- feast days and fast days, holy processions and festivals, based on events from the life of Christ and lives of the saints. Likewise, while illiteracy was common, medieval churches were decorated with stained glass, icons, statues, and other artistic representations of key elements of the faith. Finally, while catechesis (religious education) was a recurring issue within the medieval church, the Carolingian Renaissance (at the tail end of the Early Medieval period) and the rise of mendicant orders (Franciscans and Dominicans during the High Medieval age) represent serious efforts by the church to improve religious education of priests as a means of improving the religious instruction of the laity.
Publicola
1yr ago
From your first link (emphasis added):
When asked why he was compelled to revisit Velázquez's Portrait again and again, Bacon replied that he had nothing against popes, but merely sought "an excuse to use these colours, and you can't give ordinary clothes that purple colour without getting into a sort of false fauve manner".[24] At the time Bacon was coming to terms with the death of a cold, disciplinarian father, his early, illicit sexual encounters, and a very destructive sadomasochistic approach to sex.[25]
Almost all of the popes are shown within cage-like structures and screaming or about to scream. Bacon identified as a Nietzschean and atheist, and some contemporary critics saw the series as symbolic execution scenes, as if Bacon sought to enact Nietzsche's declaration that "God is dead" by killing his representative on Earth. Other critics see the series as symbolizing the killing of a father figure.[26] However Bacon balked at such literal translations, and later said that it was Velázquez himself he sought to "triumph over." He said that in the same way that Velázquez cooled Titian, he sought to "cool" Velázquez.[26]
Yes, I think that is the very definition of "a spirit of ugliness".
Per Transtellung's comment I just switched to the 'reddit' theme, and already I can tell it is much better. It does leave the big 'The Motte' site name in the upper left black (unreadable against the background), but now all links are clearly highlighted in blue, and upvotes and downvotes are clearly visible as orange and light blue respectively. Very much support his recommendation to turn 'reddit' into the official dark theme.
EDIT: it appears that the 'reddit' theme does not highlight unread comments in the same way as the 'themotte' theme does. So if I had one other suggestion, it'd be to incorporate that change into this theme. Thanks!
Publicola
1yr ago
I didn't actually realize there was a 'dark' theme until this comment. White text on dark background is my preferred look, so I switched over. However, I'm pretty sure there's a bug with the dark themes ('dark', 'midnight', and 'tron' all share this issue), where the interface doesn't register if you've clicked the upvote or downvote button, it stays the same color regardless. Any chance this could be fixed as well?
Publicola
1yr ago
But Fracophonic Africa is almost exclusively west Africa, while Wakanda is depicted (in its culture and in the very brief glimpses of its location on a holographic map) as belonging to east-central Africa -- specifically near Kenya and Tanzania. I can't really complain, since at least the France angle is rooted in some sense of history, but it's another example of Hollywood and pop culture smearing and blurring the historical lines between different regions of the world. It's comparable to assuming that Cleopatra was black since Egypt is in Africa -- the Ptolemys were Greek, and Egypt has always been closer to Mediterranean culture than sub-Saharan African culture.
This seems to be the biggest news from early voting, besides Florida seeing an overwhelming GOP victory.
Betting market odds for Democrat control of the Senate went from roughly 20% to roughly 40% in a few hours. The surge seems to have paused or plateaued, and the GOP is still favored to win control of the Senate, but it's definitely worth paying attention to. Tonight promises to be a nail-biter.
Publicola
1yr ago
In the last few hours, betting market odds for Democratic control of the Senate have surged. Up to 33-35%, from 21% only a few hours ago...
Publicola
1yr ago
Pretty much any feature from the Reddit Enhancement Suite would be a good add-on here. One that springs immediately to mind would be the ability to track upvotes/downvotes by user (so someone I've upvoted consistently would have a big green +112 next to their name, while people I downvote might have a red -22).
Another useful feature is the ability to add custom tags to other users, that exist only in your view of the site. Since I'm Catholic and outspoken Christians are fairly rare in online circles, I had a number of 'Catholic'/'Orthodox'/'Evangelical' tags on other users. Also added a few 'tankie' or 'Nazi' tags as well, just to keep track of who was who. (One nice sub-feature was that clicking on the tag brought you to the specific post that you had added the tag from, if you ever needed to remind yourself).
Not sure who to tag, but... mods, would it make sense to create a Megathread for all Israel-Gaza war posts? I get the feeling that this conflict will continue for some time -- if not the 'hot' phase of war, then certainly the aftermath -- and I would personally prefer to see this community's response in one spot rather than as responses to the latest intermittent comments that get posted here.
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