I'm into politics, philosophy, etc, and I've watched a decent amount of PT in the past year or so to see what resources she pulls up so that I can learn more about other topics. I'm currently watching her new video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVilpxowsUQ) on Judith Butler, and a lot of what Butler is saying is complete nonsense to me

• Gender is a performance, gender is only playing into stereotypes and trends and nothing more
• "Gender is a thing we do through repeated stylistic acts. Not a property but an embodied event"
• Compares all genders to dressing up as a femboy
• Saying that everyone (including trans people) have no true gender, gender is chosen throughout time and is always as fluid as the clothes you wear
• Claims that gender is performative (in its philosophical meaning) meaning the only thing needed to be that gender is to say you are/"do it" by putting on clothing/makeup etc
• Blamed the idea of sex-gender relation on the patriarchy and takes nonsense believed hundreds of years ago to support the idea that sex is in no way related to gender
• Then goes on to say actually sex is made up bc humans are 99.9% identical via DNA (no comment on just how impactful sex chromosomes/hormones/systems are on the entire body) so sex is actually fake and means nothing more than eye color, cites the fact that we used to think that race was more biologically significant than we now know it to be
• Further, sex and gender only exist in the "heterosexual matrix" and we should live in a completely gender-less and sex-less society, women only exist in relation to men and therefore lesbians aren't women because they exist outside the male gaze

I'm only 15 minutes in and I can no longer stand it
If Judith is right, why do I have to inject .25mL of testosterone every week? Why when I don't pack I can't think about that area without tears forming because there's something missing? Why does being called she/her feel out of touch and wrong? Why can't I preform as a woman without feeling literal pain? "Oh well you just don't like performing as a woman" okay but why there is a reason.
I think Butler's main issue is a big one amongst "progressive" trans spaces, she misrepresents gender roles and performance as actual neurological gender. And I feel disappointed that PT, as a trans woman, decided to put that very dangerous content out there (and then tried to save her ass by saying "oh well you can't actually choose your gender here's this incomprehensible quote from one of Butlers paper's saying that's not how it works" when literally everything in her video directly challenges that).
Wondering if anyone else has seen this video and read some of Butler's work and what your thoughts are on it

Coding a killer program is one thing, but crafting an A-worthy IT assignment? That's a whole different quest. Here's the student scoop on acing those IT papers:
Problem-Solving Prose: Professors love clear explanations. Break down complex concepts into bite-sized chunks for readers. Use diagrams, flowcharts, or screenshots to visually represent your technical points.
Code Cred: Don't just talk the talk, walk the walk (or write the code!). Include relevant code snippets, but remember proper formatting and clear annotations. Explain how the code functions within your argument.
Cite Your Sources: Plagiarism is a major bug in any IT paper. Cite research papers, online resources, and even code snippets from reputable sources. Use a consistent citation style (APA, MLA, etc.) to avoid errors.
Bonus Level: Think outside the text box! Consider creating a short demo video showcasing your program or concept in action. This can add a unique touch to your assignment and impress your professor.

[First] [Previous] [Next]
To my beloved Marcus
I know you will make sure
this Heart reaches every lost Bastard
or any curious soul in general
until this guide is no longer necessary.
It makes me so sad to think I won't live to see that day.
It is hard for me to say this, but if this book has made its way into your hands, it means that it is already too late for you. For some reason, whichever it may be, you are already in the middle of our situation. And taking the chance now that I already said something so depressing, here is another thing: there is no way for you to get out of it.

Are you being surrounded by strange events lately? I don’t know, maybe the lights around you blink more often than not, the radio changes stations without anyone touching the dial? The animals are suddenly extremely aggressive, or maybe unnaturally tame towards you?

Suddenly you can’t shake the feeling that someone, or something, is staring at you from somewhere unseen in the room…

I guess that I don’t need to mention how this all started. You probably saw something you weren’t meant to see, didn’t you. Some random person breaking the rules of reality in one way or another. A guy flying, a girl on the streets spitting fire, objects appearing out of nowhere.

Nothing makes sense and no one seems to care or know how to explain it. Well my friend, I am sorry to inform you that you have been infected. You are incubating the Arcane Infection, and you are now Awake.

Now, you are a Mage. A Bastard Mage, if you don’t have a master to guide you… which is most probably the case.

If this is the first time you read this book, or any kind of Draconian Text, this probably doesn’t make any sense. I know, it didn’t make sense for me either when I was in your place, almost seventy years ago. But trust me, everything will be explained in time. Just be patient, and stay with me, ok? Keep calm, and keep reading.

The first thing you need to learn is to shut up. You cannot talk about this with anyone who hasn’t experienced it and holds some sort of relevant position in society. Really. Famous scientists, politicians, Mayors, I don’t know. Anyone who tends to be trusted by non-mages. Just. Don’t.

If you already did, let’s hope they didn’t believe you. With some luck, you were disregarded as a fool, a maniac or a person with too vivid of an imagination.

If you survive past three days or so after opening your dumb mouth, you should be safe? Now don’t do that again. The Black Pages don’t like it when you try to talk about this…

Remember that sensation of being stalked? Let’s say that it will eventually go away, unless you are stupid or naive enough to try and bring attention to this deal.

Yes. Magic is real. Good for you. Now shut your piehole and keep reading unless you want to be remembered soon. Walls have eyes and ears, and they’ll probably continue to have them for two or three months. Trying to run away will only perpetuate this, so the best thing you can do is not think about it.

Do something stupid in these months and you will die. Disappear. Kaput. Remembered.

There are people who want to maintain this as a secret. That is another thing I will explain in time.

Right now you have two options: You can learn how to manage this new “gift” (if you want to call it that) in a remotely appropriate way; or you can just be another idiot, and try to live a normal life.

What? You think I am being unnecessarily aggressive? Well maybe I am. But you need to understand the gravity of this situation.

Because I lied. You have no options. Learn how to use this new capability to your advantage, or you will die in a freak accident.

If after reading this you prefer to just keep on with your life like nothing happened, then good for you. Close the book, and put it back where it was. With some luck it will land in the hands of someone less dense.

.

.

.

Still reading? Good. Excellent! Sit down, get comfortable, maybe grab a drink. This is going to be long.

Among the words of this tome in your hands, you will find all the information I have been able to gather along my eighty god damn years of life, or at least all that you need to know to keep yourself alive until getting a proper guide.

It will be a long journey, and many of the things here won't make much sense, especially because I had to take the time to adapt and translate documents three or four centuries old to a mostly understandable format.
So you better be thankful.

The first thing I want you to know: please, for the love of God, do not settle for the things I am exposing here. All the information in this book will be absolutely basic, it won’t replace a formal education.. All the information here is for you to know where you are, how to start, and where to aim.

And now is when I am going to start telling you what IS inside this book.

We will start with something simple: what is Magic (or “The Art”) exactly, how did you end up in this situation and why is it important that you study it by yourself.

Then, after the general explanation, I will talk a little about our “Society”, if we can call a bunch of lonely, grumpy jackasses a “Mage Society”. There are some non-written rules of etiquette and other details that you need to keep in mind, if you want to keep the head on your neck.

Another section of the book will talk about the dangers around us… and this section will be, ironically enough, quite short, because the less you know about it, the better.

Mystery is your greatest ally, it’s everyone’s greatest ally. All that you don’t know is as important as what you do know. And that is what the fourth chapter is about. Each Mage has their own magical system, according to which they can create a Heart. There are as many ways of Magic as Mages in the world (so, not really that many), but all of them share some similarities.

Chapter Five is about the foundations of a ritual. Not every magical system has rituals, but it is always useful to learn and understand how these work, just in case you may find yourself in a desperate situation..

Finally, Chapter Six will be a directory with Formulas, Glyphs and Thrills that should serve as a starting point for all of you. Nothing too complex, but still, very useful. I left a few blank pages here, for you to add anything you learn and feel convenient.

If any of you misuses it, I swear to the Gods.

And this would be the real reason behind this tome: take whatever you can, leave what you create for others to use. I started this book as some sort of reproduction of the classic “Metodología del Fantástico”, that dear Gwendolin de Recattio left for us almost four hundred years ago, and that is obviously beyond obsolete at this point.

That and also probably burned to ashes as many other manuals end up.

Take notes damn it, I will leave spaces for everyone to make a little mark. But for the love of the Gods don’t use your real name, don’t be an imbecile.

Let’s make something together. Let’s create something important for once in our stupid lives. Let’s make the Bastard's life a little easier.

Gato.

That casual exclamation to the so-called ‘gods’ makes it clear that this book is either heretical or very old. Then again, the Wohlian it is written in is quite modern… but that could be the effect of magic, right? After all, this thing is written in ‘draconic’, which seems to be a magical language that self-translates or something?

But that was not the only thing that kinda came to my attention. This guy, Gato, is treating magic like this incredibly serious and dangerous thing… and I can’t help but feel a little nervous about it. I mean, everyone seems to be doing just fine, even if there are a few rules that I have to consider. Was this deal really so complicated?

Well, Gato was the expert, and it felt like everyone respected them plenty so… I will abide by them!

Besides, the knowledge here is beyond promising! A part of me wants to skip right to chapter 6 and start learning new runes! But no, I have to be patient, I have to learn the way it was intended and take my time absorbing/acclimating to the knowledge!

That does remind me, I have my own runes to learn and start using, too… should I begin practicing that before I start learning new ones?

“Wait. Before you do any of that… there’s more on the page?”

Huh?

I will add as much as I can! This book is a great resource but it is also a bit outdated, after all it’s been almost 80 years since its writing!

Don’t give up! We will see this through!

— Giovanni.

If I leave that idiot in charge of the notes he will undoubtedly forget things. Take his optimism with a grain of salt.

Pay attention.

— Mustafá.

Annotations?

I quickly open the file on my computer to compare… and just as I thought, these annotations are not on the scanned version. The beginning is exactly the same, but the writing makes it obvious that these two were written at different times, by the same hand but, still, copied individually!

I look down at my physical version again. Who are these people? And why did they feel the need to vandalize the book like this? I can only beg for them to actually make sensible and useful comments. If this book is as old as they say, maybe the updates will be a good thi–

Wait, only 80 years? I thought a book like this would be at least a century old.

Maybe magic is surprisingly modern after all!

“Fat chance. Gato quoted one of his sources, ‘Metodología del Fantástico’, which should be around five hundred years old.”

Hmmm, whatever the case… I should ask someone about this.

But I can’t just go right back to the Chatbox after saying I would be busy, that would be silly! I instead connect to the Messenger.

Pepe is not online, probably planning a cool vacation with his family or something. Vito is out drawing, Patricio is online but busy… ah, there it is! The group Gal made. Someone should know something there…

xXxCallMeBigCookiexXx: Hi hi! n.n Anyone here?
GalaxyTaco to your rescue!: hey Tav, just me for now! the others are busy or snoring.
GalaxyTaco to your rescue!: I wish I could go for some zzz right now
xXxCallMeBigCookiexXx: Is it late where you live? o.o
GalaxyTaco to your rescue!: early, we have a few hours of difference between Wohl and Rayah.

The Commonwealth of Rayah… that’s on the literal other side of Jericho, so of course we have half a day of difference!

xXxCallMeBigCookiexXx: Wait O.o is it like, five in the morning over there then!?
GalaxyTaco to your rescue!: eyeup
GalaxyTaco to your rescue!: today I gotta take care of granny’s business and that means waking up EARLY
xXxCallMeBigCookiexXx: Damn u.u I hope you have a good day, remember to keep hydrated!
GalaxyTaco to your rescue!: hah, will do, will do.
xXxCallMeBigCookiexXx: Hmmm… hey, sorry to bother you with this but, I gotta ask… uwu
xXxCallMeBigCookiexXx: Have you ever heard of Mustafá and/or Giovanni? uwu
GalaxyTaco to your rescue!: in what context?
GalaxyTaco to your rescue!: those are names, you’re saying names right now
xXxCallMeBigCookiexXx: In magic contexts? O.o
GalaxyTaco to your rescue!: not a clue, sorry
xXxCallMeBigCookiexXx: Bah, probably just a couple of randos then u.u
xXxCallMeBigCookiexXx: Oh well, thank you anyways! n.n
GalaxyTaco to your rescue!: where did you even find those names?
xXxCallMeBigCookiexXx: Ah! I found them in the physical version of the book you sent me!
GalaxyTaco to your rescue!: why did you go looking for that?
xXxCallMeBigCookiexXx: I don’t like reading in electronic media TwT
GalaxyTaco to your rescue!: hmmm ok but be careful
GalaxyTaco to your rescue!: don’t go testing the knowledge of randos or something like that
xXxCallMeBigCookiexXx: I won’t, I won’t -u- I will be nice and careful!

Cracking my knuckles, I finally get back into the book. Finally, some answers at hand!

I did not use AI to write my essay 🥲 the 9% on turn it in is from quotes I cited!!! What do I do? Will he still mark the actual assignment (this one is only the draft)
I haven’t had any issues with AI in the past assignments?
In the Real assignment submission I attached my rough draft and my essay outline (not here).
Does this mean they will not mark it until I hand in a new one? I don’t have time for this. I have deadlines for stuff. I worked really hard on this essay.
How do I contact this teacher to explain my writing process and share my documents with him to see the history?

I have no experience formatting in MLA. Or formatting essays correctly in general honestly. Here’s my paragraph:
An excerpt of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World stuck with me:
“But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”
“In fact,” said Mustapha Mond, “you’re claiming the right to be happy.”
“All right then,” said the Savage defiantly. “I’m claiming the right to be unhappy.”
I put an indent in the formatting for the text I’m quoting. How do I cite this correctly in the MLA format? Thanks!

Hey Redditors,
I’m diving into writing a research paper and thought I’d share some tips that have helped me along the way. Whether you’re a newbie or looking to refine your skills, these pointers can guide you through the process.

1. Choose a Clear, Focused Topic: Start with a broad area of interest, then narrow it down to a specific question or hypothesis. A well-defined topic helps you stay on track and makes your research more manageable.
2. Conduct Thorough Research: Use a variety of sources—books, academic journals, reputable websites. Take detailed notes and organize them by theme or argument. Don’t forget to keep track of your sources for citations!
3. Develop a Strong Thesis Statement: Your thesis is the backbone of your paper. It should be clear, concise, and reflect the main argument or finding of your research. Everything in your paper should support or relate to this statement.
4. Create an Outline: Organize your thoughts and structure your paper before you start writing. An outline helps you see the big picture and ensures a logical flow of ideas.
5. Write a Compelling Introduction: Grab your reader’s attention with a strong opening. Provide background information and clearly state your thesis. Your introduction should set the stage for the rest of the paper.
6. Craft Clear, Coherent Body Paragraphs: Each paragraph should focus on a single idea that supports your thesis. Start with a topic sentence, provide evidence or examples, and explain how it relates to your argument. Use transitions to maintain flow.
7. Use Credible Sources: Back up your arguments with evidence from credible sources. Peer-reviewed journals, books by experts, and official statistics are generally reliable. Avoid questionable websites and outdated materials.
8. Analyze, Don’t Just Describe: Go beyond summarizing your sources. Critically analyze the information, compare different viewpoints, and explain the significance of your findings. Show how your research contributes to the field.
9. Write a Strong Conclusion: Summarize your main points and restate your thesis (in a new way). Discuss the implications of your findings and suggest areas for future research. Your conclusion should leave a lasting impression.
10. Revise and Edit: Don’t submit your first draft. Take time to revise for clarity, coherence, and consistency. Check for grammar, punctuation, and formatting errors. Consider getting feedback from peers or mentors.
11. Properly Cite Your Sources: Avoid plagiarism by correctly citing all sources. Follow the required citation style (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.) consistently. Proper citations add credibility to your paper and acknowledge the work of other researchers.
12. Stay Organized and Manage Your Time: Break down the writing process into manageable steps and set deadlines for each. Use tools like reference managers (Zotero, Mendeley) to keep your sources organized. Staying on schedule reduces stress and improves the quality of your work.

Remember, writing a research paper is a process. Don’t rush it, and give yourself time to think, write, and revise. Good luck, and happy writing!

On a rainy Saturday afternoon not so long ago when internet connection was fluctuating in most homes, the 80-year-old Cecile Guidote-Alvarez, widow of the late Senator Heherson Alvarez, carrying a mini iPad, hurriedly alighted from a three-wheeled pedicab Toktok and stormed her way into a popular coffee shop in a mall in Manila.

A senior citizen in panic mode, she told the stunned baristas she’s looking for a Wi-Fi connection because she was about to interview retired Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonio Carpio via Zoom.
The coffee shop, a known world brand, has Wi-Fi exclusive to its employees, so the old lady was told to try other establishments. She went from one coffee shop to another only to be told the same, until a kind stranger led her to a well-known beauty salon with a free internet connection.
The lady salon attendant was very accommodating to the octogenarian, even typing the password on her IPad. Of course, she needed to avail herself of their salon services. Initially, she opted for a haircut, but since she needed to talk and hear clearly who she was talking to, she settled for a foot spa with pedicure.
“They lowered the volume of the piped-in music, and since there were less customers because it’s been raining all day, I was able to do my interview,” Guidote-Alvarez said.
For the next half-an-hour, the hair dressers and manicurists working with their scissors, nail clippers and cuticle removers on their customers’ hair and fingernails, listened to Carpio and Guidote-Alvarez discussed how Filipino fishermen and the Philippine Navy ships helplessly negotiate their ways in Scarborough Shoal amid the territorial disputes in the West Philippine Sea.
“They were all very nice to me. I was able to finish my interview, with newly pedicured nails,” she told The Diarist.
For those who’ve worked with Guidote-Alvarez, her steadfast, almost stubborn, nature to accomplish a task, is nothing out of the ordinary. She would improvise, find alternatives, call up friends and former students, wake them up from sleep, just to get things done.
But now, in her 80s, legally blind and nearly deaf, she has mellowed down.
Cecile Alvarez with her mentors, National Artist for Literature Alejandro Roces, Jr and Fr. James Reuter. SJ
In her twilight years, Guidote-Alvarez has been solely hosting the 57-year-old Radyo Balintataw on DZRH, one of the oldest radio stations in the Philippines, where she tackles a wide range of topics, from climate change, women’s health, theater, culture, dance, to current issues, apart from playing old recordings of classic radio plays she produced and directed, dating back to the late ‘80s.
She shared with TheDiarist.ph how she started and continues to host one of the longest running advocacy programs on AM Radio.
Theater on TV
After founding the Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA) on April 7, 1967, or exactly 57 years ago, Guidote-Alvarez thought of the need to expose PETA’s members to television, so she started conceptualizing Balintataw, which in Filipino means the pupil of the eye, but in a larger context has something to do with having wild imagination, or what you might see if you have a third eye.

“I designed Balintataw as a bridge between cinema and the stage, where the youth being trained in theater skills can have a ready-made laboratory experience linked with the film and entertainment industry that would likewise have a natural on-the-job training and orientation regarding the theatrical discipline of working with a literary script, whether dramatic or comic—not the regular improvised script done on taping or copycat scripts from foreign themes,” Guidote-Alvarez wrote in her yet-to-be published Memoir of a Freedom Fighter’s Wife.
“A primary goal when I conceived PETA was to initiate and sustain artistic expression that draws meaning and power from the lives of the people, and sharing the literary gems with a greater number of audiences through a Broadcast Theater-Film Program with Balintataw on Channel 5,” she added.
“No matter how little the pay, at least it provided our local writers with a little honorarium. I sought permission for award-winning pieces of the Palanca Playwriting contest to be fleshed out to reach the masses. The much-awarded playwright Bert Florentino served as our literary manager, assisted by Mauro Avena. Eventually, Isagani Cruz took over when Bert left for the US,” she wrote.
“Writers need exposure and encouragement through a regular TV performance that will give them a sense of achievement and inspire them to keep on writing with some kind of honorarium. I was glad Lupita Aquino (now Kashiwahara) agreed to be TV director and Robert Arevalo as TV host.
She got members of the PETA Kalinangan Ensemble to serve as stage directors. “This is to undertake preliminary preparation with a rehearsal with the actors for character development and memorization and preliminary staging,” she wrote.
Five months after PETA was founded, Balintataw TV premiered on Channel 5 on Aug. 19, 1967, coinciding with the Buwan ng Wika birthdate of President Manuel Luis Quezon.
The first play, whose title escapes her now, featured Armida Siguion-Reyna and Maria Eva “Chingbee” Kalaw. She employed photo journalist and award-winning photographedocumentarist/cinematographer, Romy Vitug, to work with her in filming outdoor scenes for Balintataw.

In the pre-Martial Law Balintataw, among those initiated into television were Lino Brocka, Elwood Perez, Nick Lizaso, Maryo delos Reyes, Mario O’Hara, Joey Gosiengfiao, Behn Cervantes, and Frank Rivera.
Among the stage actors who crossed over to television were Lily Gamboa, Angie Ferro, Lorlie Villanueva, Jonee Gamboa, Joy Soler, Sherry Lara, Gardy Labad, Noel Trinidad.
Like with PETA, Guidote-Alvarez directed and managed Balintataw for five years. Because of Martial Law, she and husband Heherson went on exile in the US to escape a military shoot-to-kill order on Heherson, who was tagged as a subversive.
Post-Martial Law
Internationally acclaimed auteur Lav Diaz mentioned in several interviews how he learned writing radio and TV scripts in Balintataw.
This happened in the late 1980s, when the Alvarez couple returned from exile.
Despite its absence on the air in the Martial Law years, Balintataw was honored by Star Awards as among the 20 unforgettable outstanding broadcast programs in the Philippines.
“This encouraged me to consider reviving Balintataw on TV. Another blessing was a FAMAS award for having an important role in the development of cinema recognizing Balintataw as a bridge for synergizing cinema with the stage, providing a pathway of entry of our PETA artists into film and for movie stars to consider enriching their experience by acting on the legitimate stage,” Guidote-Alvarez wrote.
Though she didn’t return to PETA anymore because it had been surviving well and had its own set of officers led by Brocka, she just tapped some of its members for the return of Balintataw.
For 14 years, the Alvarez couple lived in the US as political exiles, shown here during a Ninoy Aquino Movement meeting. Cecile revived Radyo Balintataw upon their return in the late 1980s.
Channel 4 stint
“I arranged to revive TV Balintataw on Channel 4 in 1989. We began with a drama about a rebel returnee, title escapes me now, but I clearly remember it was written by Lualhati Bautista and directed by Maryo de los Reyes. We also had a good story series on the hazing of Lenny Villa, an Aquila Legis Frat neophyte,” she wrote.
At the time, Heherson had been elected senator after having served as Agrarian Reform Minister and eventually Cabinet Secretary during the first year of the Cory Aquino Administration.
“We were able to unravel the deadly hazing process from a fellow neophyte who broke the code of silence as we revealed graphically, acted the cruel process used. I had Jose Mari Avellana direct it. This presentation won all the awards. Lav Diaz was training with us and he started writing teleplays. We also had Nora Aunor in an adaptation of Bert Florentino’s The World Is An Apple, adapted by Frank Rivera, and I had Nick Lizaso direct.”

Emmy Awards
Balintataw TV was selected as one of five soaps for social change recognized by Emmy Awards. The Philippines was one of five countries cited, with Mexico, India, Brazil and Kenya.
“The nomination was made possible by the wonderful support from David Poindexter. It was a supreme honor for our country to be recognized in the Emmy Awards, to be cited among the five Third World countries using soap opera for social change.”
Poindexter was a Methodist minister and TV producer who founded the Population Communications International.
Surviving on radio
“In spite of the cry about how television can be deadening the minds of the people with copied themes with an eternal favorite love triangle story, there was really no funding for Balintataw,” she wrote.
“Sponsors would go naturally to the commercial stations where big stars were paid highly for the starring role. Balintataw may have substance but we could not afford payment of bankable stars,” she added.
“Financial stress forced me to drop TV and remain on radio because I didn’t want to kill Balintataw per se just because we didn’t have funds.”
Creative classroom
“We have focused on Balintataw as a creative classroom on the air. I was able to talk to Fred J. Elizalde of DZRH and the president of the network, Mr. Jun Nicdao,” she wrote.
In the ‘80s, the HIV/AIDS became a global epidemic and in the Philippines, the general populace was still clueless on how to deal with it.
“In order to get funding, the first series I did was about the explosive news regarding AIDS in Asia. I got the DOH Secretary at the time, Dr. Juan Flavier, to act as himself, providing the data. It was easier to start off with an AIDS radio serial.
They did a minimum of 13 episodes to raise awareness about the disease.
“From then on, some of our television scripts we transformed into a radio version. DZRH provided us with our initial production staff, so we used some from the network and some of its resident artists and drama talents. Our time slots were changing but always coming after the long-running horror drama, Gabi ng Lagim.
“We worked on the themes of overseas workers, the drug problem, corruption, aside from portraying contemporary and literary classics serving as social commentaries,” she wrote.
Women playwrights
“We dramatized the works of noted women writers and playwrights like Estrella Alfon, Genoveva Edroza Matute and Marilou Jacob, who is distinguished in being a founding president of Women’s Playwright International.
“Apart from our PETA staple of writers, we involved young, upcoming and budding university and community theater groups.
“We also had a lot of foreign plays, where we could feature theater festivals beyond borders. We could do Shakespeare, we could do Euripides but also the current playwrights in the Arab region we translated in our language.
“We brought in Chinese contemporary plays, Malaysian, Indonesian and from other women writers from ASEAN member countries.”
Virtual history book
“The significance of Balintataw is portrayed as a virtual history book on audio as it unveiled events in the country. Radio is fresh, instant and up-to date,” she added.
When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, Balintataw became Guidote-Alvarez’s outlet and therapy. Having lost her husband on the second month of the pandemic, a widow cocooned at home, she began hosting it six days a week, learning how to use an iPad and interviewing via Zoom.
The word “Balintataw” has been associated with her name.
Visual artist and editorial cartoonist Benjie Lontoc in casual meeting told us how in his younger days, when AM Radio was a national past-time, he was surprised to hear a Filipino adaptation of No Exit by Jean Paul-Sarte. This was when radio was airing soap, fantasy adventures targeting housewives and children.
Another was the airing of Larawan as a radio play in the 1990s, with Guidote-Alvarez as the voice of Candida Marasigan.
Leopoldo Salcedo (left) as Manolo in a confrontation scene with Dante Rivero as Tony Javier in PETA’s 1968 ‘Larawan’ directed by Cecile Guidote-Alvarez. (Photo from PETA archives)
In the 1960s, she directed Larawan, the first Filipino adaptation of Joaquin’s A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino for PETA’s second season. It ran from December 1968 to January 1969 at the Raha Sulayman Theater at Fort Santiago in Intramural. In the cast were Rita Gomez (Candida), Lolita Rodriguez (Paula), Leopoldo Salcedo (Don Manolo) and Dante Rivero (Tony Javier).
Guidote-Alvarez has a funny recollection of the radio play. It was Nick Joaquin himself who told her years ago how his pedicurist suddenly started a conversation about Larawan.

Joaquin was relaxing on the barber’s chair having a post-haircut pedicure and foot spa when the lady pedicurist asked him how the story would end. Joaquin was stunned because he didn’t want to be known in the barber shop as Nick Joaquin the famous National Artist for Literature, but just a regular customer.
“He told me he almost fell out from the chair. He was a very private person and the pedicurist recognized him as the playwright,” Guidote-Alvarez, laughing, told TheDiarist.ph.
When she was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2000, she was given only three years to live. It’s been more than two decades since then. She has also conquered COVID-19 twice.
Over and beyond her work in theater and various advocacies, Guidote-Alvarez is among the few surviving practitioners of AM Radio broadcasting.
The beauty salon incident wasn’t a first for the octogenarian radio host. She occasionally went back there to interview guests and record her shows whenever Wi-Fi connections in her home fluctuated.
Despite all setbacks, man-made or otherwise, the steadfast Cecile Guidote-Alvarez’s voice continues to be heard in this mass media platform in an era that knows mainly Spotify. As Joaquin wrote, “to remember and to sing, that is her vocation.”
(Except Saturday, Radyo Balintataw airs daily on DZRH 666 Khz AM radio after ‘Gabi ng Lagim’, and live streamed on radio.org.ph. Some episodes have been uploaded on YouTube.)

"Why Did Jesus Die on the Cross?"

The main reason Jesus died on the cross was to defeat Satan and set us free from his oppressive rule. Everything else that Jesus accomplished was to be understood as an aspect and consequence of this victory (e.g., Recapitulation, Moral Influence, etc.).
This understanding of why Jesus had to die is called the Christus Victor (Latin for “Christ is Victorious”) view of the atonement. But, what exactly was Christ victorious from, and why? To find out the answers to these questions, we have to turn to the Old Testament, as that's what the apostles would often allude to in order to properly teach their audience the message they were trying to convey (Rom. 15:4).
The OT is full of conflict between the Father (YHVH) and false gods, between YHVH and cosmic forces of chaos. The Psalms speak of this conflict between YHVH and water monsters of the deeps (an ancient image for chaos) (Psa. 29:3-4; 74:10-14; 77:16, 19; 89:9-10; 104:2-9, etc).
The liberation of Israel from Egypt wasn’t just a conflict between Pharaoh and Moses. It was really between YHVH and the false gods of Egypt.
Regardless of whether you think the aforementioned descriptions are literal or metaphorical, the reality that the Old Testament describes is that humanity lived in a “cosmic war zone.”
The Christus Victor motif is about Christ reigning victorious over wicked principalities and Satan's kingdom, and is strongly emphasized throughout the New Testament. Scripture declares that Jesus came to drive out "the prince of this world” (John 12:31), to “destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8), to “destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil” (Heb. 2:14) and to “put all enemies under his feet” (1 Cor 15:25). Jesus came to overpower the “strong man” (Satan) who held the world in bondage and worked with his Church to plunder his "palace" (Luke 11:21-22). He came to end the reign of the cosmic “thief” who seized the world to “steal, and to kill, and to destroy” the life YHVH intended for us (John 10:10). Jesus came and died on the cross to disarm “the principalities and powers” and make a “shew of them openly [i.e., public spectacle]” by “triumphing over them in [the cross]” (Col. 2:15).
Beyond these explicit statements, there are many other passages that express the Christus Victor motif as well. For example, the first prophecy in the Bible foretells that a descendent of Eve (Jesus) would crush the head of the serpent (Gen. 3:15). The first Christian sermon ever preached proclaimed that Jesus in principle conquered all YHVH's enemies (Acts 2:32-36). And the single most frequently quoted Old Testament passage by New Testament authors is Psalm 110:1 which predicts that Christ would conquer all YHVH’s opponents. (Psalm 110 is quoted or alluded to in Matthew 22:41-45; 26:64, Mark 12:35-37; 14:62, Luke 20:41-44; 22:69, Acts 5:31; 7:55-56, Romans 8:34, 1st Corinthians 15:22-25, Ephesians 1:20, Hebrews 1:3; 1:13; 5:6, 10; 6:20; 7:11, 15, 17, 21; 8:1; 10:12-13, 1st Peter 3:22, and Revelation 3:21.) According to New Testament scholar Oscar Cullman, the frequency with which New Testament authors cite this Psalm is the greatest proof that Christ’s “victory over the angel powers stands at the very center of early Christian thought.”
Because of man's rebellion, the Messiah's coming involved a rescue mission that included a strategy for vanquishing the powers of darkness.
Since YHVH is a God of love who gives genuine “say-so” to both angels and humans, YHVH rarely accomplishes His providential plans through coercion. YHVH relies on His infinite wisdom to achieve His goals. Nowhere is YHVH's wisdom put more on display than in the manner in which He outsmarted Satan and the powers of evil, using their own evil to bring about their defeat.
Most readers probably know the famous story from ancient Greece about the Trojan Horse. To recap the story, Troy and Greece had been locked in a ten-year-long vicious war when, according to Homer and Virgil, the Greeks came up with a brilliant idea. They built an enormous wooden horse, hid soldiers inside and offered it to the Trojans as a gift, claiming they were conceding defeat and going home. The delighted Trojans accepted the gift and proceeded to celebrate by drinking themselves into a drunken stupor. When night came and the Trojan warriors were too wasted to fight, the Greeks exited the horse, unlocked the city gates to quietly let all their compatriots in, and easily conquered the city, thus winning the war.
Historians debate whether any of this actually happened. But either way, as military strategies go, it’s brilliant.
Now, there are five clues in the New Testament that suggest YHVH was using something like this Trojan Horse strategy against the powers when he sent Jesus into the world:
1) The Bible tells us that YHVH's victory over the powers of darkness was achieved by the employment of YHVH’s wisdom, and was centered on that wisdom having become reality in Jesus Christ (Rom. 16:25, 1 Cor. 2:7, Eph. 3:9-10, Col. 1:26). It also tells us that, for some reason, this Christ-centered wisdom was kept “secret and hidden” throughout the ages. It’s clear from this that YHVH's strategy was to outsmart and surprise the powers by sending Jesus.
2) While humans don’t generally know Jesus’ true identity during his ministry, demons do. They recognize Jesus as the Son of God, the Messiah, but, interestingly enough, they have no idea what he’s doing (Mark 1:24; 3:11; 5:7, Luke 8:21). Again, the wisdom of YHVH in sending Jesus was hidden from them.
3) We’re told that, while humans certainly share in the responsibility for the crucifixion, Satan and the powers were working behind the scenes to bring it about (John 13:27 cf. 1 Cor. 2:6-8). These forces of evil helped orchestrate the crucifixion.
4) We’re taught that if the “princes of this world [age]” had understood the secret wisdom of YHVH, “they would not have crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Cor 2:8 cf. vss 6-7). Apparently, Satan and the powers regretted orchestrating Christ’s crucifixion once they learned of the wisdom of YHVH that was behind it.
5) Finally, we can begin to understand why the powers came to regret crucifying “the Lord of glory” when we read that it was by means of the crucifixion that the “handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us [i.e., the charge of our legal indebtedness]” was “[taken] out of the way [i.e., canceled]” as the powers were disarmed. In this way Christ “triumph[ed] over” the powers by "his cross” and even “made a shew of them openly” (Col. 2:14-15). Through Christ’s death and resurrection YHVH's enemies were vanquished and placed under his Messiah's feet, and ultimately His own in the end (1 Cor. 15:23-28).
Putting these five clues together, we can discern YHVH's Trojan Horse strategy in sending Jesus.
The powers couldn’t discern why Jesus came because YHVH's wisdom was hidden from them. YHVH's wisdom was motivated by unfathomable love, and since Satan and the other powers were evil, they lacked the capacity to understand it. Their evil hearts prevented them from suspecting what YHVH was up to.
What the powers did understand was that Jesus was mortal. This meant he was killable. Lacking the capacity to understand that this was the means by which YHVH would ultimately bring about the defeat of death (and thus, pave the road for the resurrection itself), they never suspected that making Jesus vulnerable to their evil might actually be part of YHVH's infinitely wise plan.
And so they took the bait (or "ransom"; Matt. 20:28, Mark 10:45, 1 Tim. 2:5-6). Utilizing Judas and other willing human agents, the powers played right into YHVH’s secret plan and orchestrated the crucifixion of the Messiah (Acts 2:22-23; 4:28). YHVH thus brilliantly used the self-inflicted incapacity of evil to understand love against itself. And, like light dispelling darkness, the unfathomably beautiful act of YHVH's love in sending the willing Messiah as a "ransom" to these blood-thirsty powers defeated them. The whole creation was in principle freed and reconciled to YHVH, while everything written against us humans was nailed to the cross, thus robbing the powers of the only legal claim they had on us. They were “spoiled [i.e., disempowered]” (Col. 2:14-15).
As happened to the Trojans in accepting the gift from the Greeks, in seizing on Christ’s vulnerability and orchestrating his crucifixion, the powers unwittingly cooperated with YHVH to unleash the one power in the world that dispels all evil and sets captives free. It’s the power of self-sacrificial love.

Why Penal Substitution Is Unbiblical

For the sake of keeping this already lengthy post as short as possible I'm not going to spend too much time on why exactly PSA (Penal Substitutionary Atonement) is inconsistent with Scripture, but I'll go ahead and point out the main reasons why I believe this is so, and let the reader look further into this subject by themselves, being that there are many resources out there which have devoted much more time than I ever could here in supporting this premise.

"Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us:"-1 Corinthians 5:7

The Passover is one of the two most prominent images in the New Testament given as a comparison to Christ's atonement and what it accomplished, (the other most common image being the Day of Atonement sacrifice).
In the Passover, the blood of the lamb on the door posts of the Hebrews in the book of Exodus was meant to mark out those who were YHVH's, not be a symbol of PSA, as the lamb itself was not being punished by God in place of the Hebrews, but rather the kingdom of Egypt (and thus, allegorically speaking, the kingdom of darkness which opposed YHVH) was what was being judged and punished, because those who were not "covered" by the blood of the lamb could be easily identified as not part of God's kingdom/covenant and liberated people.
Looking at the Day of Atonement sacrifice (which, again, Christ's death is repeatedly compared to throughout the New Testament), this ritual required a ram, a bull, and two goats (Lev. 16:3-5). The ram was for a burnt offering intended to please God (Lev. 16:3-4). The bull served as a sin offering for Aaron, the high priest, and his family. In this case, the sin offering restored the priest to ritual purity, allowing him to occupy sacred space and be near YHVH’s presence. Two goats taken from "the congregation” were needed for the single sin offering for the people (Lev. 16:5). So why two goats?
The high priest would cast lots over the two goats, with one chosen as a sacrifice “for the Lord” (Lev. 16:8). The blood of that goat would purify the people. The second goat was not sacrificed or designated “for the Lord.” On the contrary, this goat—the one that symbolically carried the sins away from the camp of Israel into the wilderness—was “for Azazel” (Lev. 16:8-10).
What—or who—is Azazel?
The Hebrew term azazel (עזאזל) occurs four times in Leviticus 16 but nowhere else in most people's canon of the Bible, (and I say "most people's canon," because some people do include 1 Enoch in their canon of Scripture, which of course goes into great detail about this "Azazel" figure). Many translations prefer to translate the term as a phrase, “the goat that goes away,” which is the same idea conveyed in the King James Version’s “scapegoat.” Other translations treat the word as a name: Azazel. The “scapegoat” option is possible, but since the phrase “for Azazel” parallels the phrase “for YHVH” (“for the Lord”), the wording suggests that two divine figures are being contrasted by the two goats.
A strong case can be made for translating the term as the name Azazel. Ancient Jewish texts show that Azazel was understood as a demonic figure associated with the wilderness. The Mishnah (ca. AD 200; Yoma 6:6) records that the goat for Azazel was led to a cliff and pushed over, ensuring it would not return with its death. This association of the wilderness with evil is also evident in the New Testament, as this was where Jesus met the devil (Matt. 4:1). Also, in Leviticus 17:1-7 we learn that some Israelites had been accustomed to sacrificing offerings to "devils" (alternatively translated as “goat demons”). The Day of Atonement replaced this illegitimate practice.
The second goat was not sent into the wilderness as a sacrifice to a foreign god or demon. The act of sending the live goat out into the wilderness, which was unholy ground, was to send the sins of the people where they belonged—to the demonic domain. With one goat sacrificed to bring purification and access to YHVH and one goat sent to carry the people’s sins to the demonic domain, this annual ritual reinforced the identity of the true God and His mercy and holiness.
When Jesus died on the cross for all of humanity’s sins, he was crucified outside the city, paralleling the sins of the people being cast to the wilderness via the goat to Azazel. Jesus died once for all sinners, negating the need for this ritual.
As previously stated, the goat which had all the sin put on it was sent alive off to the wilderness, while the blood of the goat which was blameless was used to purify the temple and the people. Penal substitution would necessitate the killing of the goat which had the sin put on it.
Mind you, this is the only sacrificial ritual of any kind in the Torah in which sins are placed on an animal. The only time it happens is this, and that animal is not sacrificed. Most PSA proponents unwittingly point to this ritual as evidence of their view, despite it actually serving as evidence to the contrary, because most people don't read their Old Testament and don't familiarize themselves with the "boring parts" like Leviticus (when it's actually rather important to do so, since that book explains how exactly animal offerings were to be carried out and why they were done in the first place).
In the New Testament, Christ's blood was not only meant to mark out those who were his, but also expel the presence of sin and ritual uncleanness so as to make the presence of YHVH manifest in the believer's life. Notice how God's wrath isn't poured out on Christ in our stead on this view, but rather His wrath was poured out on those who weren't covered, and the presence of sin and evil were merely removed by that which is pure and blameless (Christ's blood) for the believer.
All this is the difference between expiation and propitiation.

The Content of Paul's Gospel Message

When the New Testament writers talked about “the gospel,” they referred not to the Protestant doctrine of justification sola fide–the proposition that if we will stop trying to win God’s favor and only just believe that God has exchanged our sin for Christ’s perfect righteousness, then in God’s eyes we will have the perfect righteousness required both for salvation and for assuaging our guilty consciences–but rather they referred to the simple but explosive proposition Kyrios Christos, “Christ is Lord.” That is to say, the gospel was, properly speaking, the royal announcement that Jesus of Nazareth was the God of Israel’s promised Messiah, the King of kings and Lord of lords.
The New Testament writers were not writing in a cultural or linguistic vacuum and their language of euangelion (good news) and euangelizomai would have been understood by their audience in fairly specific ways. Namely, in the Greco-Roman world for which the New Testament authors wrote, euangelion/euangelizomai language typically had to do with either A) the announcement of the accession of a ruler, or B) the announcement of a victory in battle, and would probably have been understood along those lines.
Let’s take the announcements of a new ruler first. The classic example of such a language is the Priene Calendar Inscription, dating to circa 9 BC, which celebrates the rule (and birthday) of Caesar Augustus as follows:
"It was seeming to the Greeks in Asia, in the opinion of the high priest Apollonius of Menophilus Azanitus: Since Providence, which has ordered all things of our life and is very much interested in our life, has ordered things in sending Augustus, whom she filled with virtue for the benefit of men, sending him as a savior [soter] both for us and for those after us, him who would end war and order all things, and since Caesar by his appearance [epiphanein] surpassed the hopes of all those who received the good tidings [euangelia], not only those who were benefactors before him, but even the hope among those who will be left afterward, and the birthday of the god [he genethlios tou theou] was for the world the beginning of the good tidings [euangelion] through him; and Asia resolved it in Smyrna."
The association of the term euangelion with the announcement of Augustus’ rule is clear enough and is typical of how this language is used elsewhere. To give another example, Josephus records that at the news of the accession of the new emperor Vespasian (69 AD) “every city kept festival for the good news (euangelia) and offered sacrifices on his behalf.” (The Jewish War, IV.618). Finally, a papyrus dating to ca. 498 AD begins:
"Since I have become aware of the good news (euangeliou) about the proclamation as Caesar (of Gaius Julius Verus Maximus Augustus)…"
This usage occurs also in the Septuagint, the Greek translations of the Jewish Scriptures. For instance LXX Isaiah 52:7 reads, “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news (euangelizomenou), who publishes peace, who brings good news (euangelizomenos) of salvation, who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns.'" Similarly, LXX Isaiah 40:9-10 reads:

"…Go up on a high mountain, you who bring good tidings (ho euangelizomenos) to Sion; lift up your voice with strength, you who bring good tidings (ho euangelizomenos); lift it up, do not fear; say to the cities of Ioudas, “See your God!” Behold, the Lord comes with strength, and his arm with authority (kyrieias)…."-NETS, Esaias 40:9-10

This consistent close connection between euangelion/euangelizomai language and announcements of rule strongly suggests that many of the initial hearers/readers of the early Christians’ evangelical language would likely have understood that language as the announcement of a new ruler (see, e.g., Acts 17:7), and, unless there is strong NT evidence to the contrary, we should presume that the NT writers probably intended their language to be so understood.
However, the other main way in which euangelion/euangelizomai language was used in the Greco-Roman world was with reference to battle reports, announcements of victory in war. A classic example of this sort of usage can be found in LXX 2 Samuel 18:19ff, where David receives word that his traitorous son, Absalom, has been defeated in battle. Euangelion/euangelizomai is used throughout the passage for the communications from the front.
As already shown throughout this post, the NT speaks of Jesus’s death and resurrection as a great victory over the powers that existed at that time and, most importantly, over death itself. Jesus’ conquest of the principalities and powers was the establishment of his rule and comprehensive authority over heaven and earth, that is, of his Lordship over all things (again, at that time).
This was the content of Paul's gospel message...

Justification, and the "New" Perspective on Paul

The following quotation is from The Gospel Coalition, and I believe it to be a decently accurate summary of the NPP (New Perspective on Paul), despite it being from a source which is in opposition to it:

The New Perspective on Paul, a major scholarly shift that began in the 1980s, argues that the Jewish context of the New Testament has been wrongly understood and that this misunderstand[ing] has led to errors in the traditional-Protestant understanding of justification. According to the New Perspective, the Jewish systems of salvation were not based on works-righteousness but rather on covenantal nomism, the belief that one enters the people of God by grace and stays in through obedience to the covenant. This means that Paul could not have been referring to works-righteousness by his phrase “works of the law”; instead, he was referring to Jewish boundary markers that made clear who was or was not within the people of God. For the New Perspective, this is the issue that Paul opposes in the NT. Thus, justification takes on two aspects for the New Perspective rather than one; initial justification is by faith (grace) and recognizes covenant status (ecclesiology), while final justification is partially by works, albeit works produced by the Spirit.

I believe what's called the "new perspective" is actually rather old, and that the Reformers' view of Paul is what is truly new, being that the Lutheran understanding of Paul is simply not Biblical.
The Reformation perspective understands Paul to be arguing against a legalistic Jewish culture that seeks to earn their salvation through works. However, supporters of the NPP argue that Paul has been misread. We contend he was actually combating Jews who were boasting because they were God's people, the "elect" or the "chosen ones." Their "works," so to speak, were done to show they were God's covenant people and not to earn their salvation.
The key questions involve Paul’s view(s) of the law and the meaning of the controversy in which Paul was engaged. Paul strongly argued that we are “justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law” (Gal. 2:16b). Since the time of Martin Luther, this has been understood as an indictment of legalistic efforts to merit favor before God. Judaism was cast in the role of the medieval "church," and so Paul’s protests became very Lutheran, with traditional-Protestant theology reinforced in all its particulars (along with its limitations) as a result. In hermeneutical terms, then, the historical context of Paul’s debate will answer the questions we have about what exactly the apostle meant by the phrase "works of the law," along with other phrases often used as support by the Reformers for their doctrine of Sola Fide (justification by faith alone), like when Paul mentions "the righteousness of God."
Obviously an in-depth analysis of the Pauline corpus and its place in the context of first-century Judaism would take us far beyond the scope of this brief post. We can, however, quickly survey the topography of Paul’s thought in context, particularly as it has emerged through the efforts of recent scholarship, and note some salient points which may be used as the basis of a refurbished soteriology.
[Note: The more popular scholars associated with the NPP are E.P. Sanders, James Dunn, and N.T. Wright. Dunn was the first to coin the term "The New Perspective" in a 1983 Manson Memorial Lecture, The New Perspective on Paul and the Law.]
Varying authors since the early 1900's have brought up the charge that Paul was misread by those in the tradition of Martin Luther and other Protestant Reformers. Yet, it wasn't until E.P. Sanders' 1977 book, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, that scholars began to pay much attention to the issue. In his book, Sanders argues that the Judaism of Paul's day has been wrongly criticized as a religion of "works-salvation" by those in the Protestant tradition.
A fundamental premise in the NPP is that Judaism was actually a religion of grace. Sander's puts it clearly:
"On the point at which many have found the decisive contrast between Paul and Judaism - grace and works - Paul is in agreement with Palestinian Judaism... Salvation is by grace but judgment is according to works'...God saves by grace, but... within the framework established by grace he rewards good deeds and punishes transgression." (Paul and Palestinian Judaism, p. 543)
N.T. Wright adds that, "we have misjudged early Judaism, especially Pharisaism, if we have thought of it as an early version of Pelagianism," (Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, p. 32).
Sanders has coined a now well-known phrase to describe the character of first-century Palestinian Judaism: “covenantal nomism.” The meaning of “covenantal nomism” is that human obedience is not construed as the means of entering into God’s covenant. That cannot be earned; inclusion within the covenant body is by the grace of God. Rather, obedience is the means of maintaining one’s status within the covenant. And with its emphasis on divine grace and forgiveness, Judaism was never a religion of legalism.
If covenantal nomism was operating as the primary category under which Jews understood the Law, then when Jews spoke of obeying commandments, or when they required strict obedience of themselves and fellow Jews, it was because they were "keeping the covenant," rather than out of legalism.
More recently, N.T. Wright has made a significant contribution in his little book, What Saint Paul Really Said. Wright’s focus is the gospel and the doctrine of justification. With incisive clarity he demonstrates that the core of Paul’s gospel was not justification by faith, but the death and resurrection of Christ and his exaltation as Lord. The proclamation of the gospel was the proclamation of Jesus as Lord, the Messiah who fulfilled Israel’s expectations. Romans 1:3-4, not 1:16-17, is the gospel, contrary to traditional thinking. Justification is not the center of Paul’s thought, but an outworking of it:
"[T]he doctrine of justification by faith is not what Paul means by ‘the gospel’. It is implied by the gospel; when the gospel is proclaimed, people come to faith and so are regarded by God as members of his people. But ‘the gospel’ is not an account of how people get saved. It is, as we saw in an earlier chapter, the proclamation of the lordship of Jesus Christ….Let us be quite clear. ‘The gospel’ is the announcement of Jesus’ lordship, which works with power to bring people into the family of Abraham, now redefined around Jesus Christ and characterized solely by faith in him. ‘Justification’ is the doctrine which insists that all those who have this faith belong as full members of this family, on this basis and no other." (pp. 132, 133)
Wright brings us to this point by showing what “justification” would have meant in Paul’s Jewish context, bound up as it was in law-court terminology, eschatology, and God’s faithfulness to God’s covenant.
Specifically, Wright explodes the myth that the pre-Christian Saul was a pious, proto-Pelagian moralist seeking to earn his individual passage into heaven. Wright capitalizes on Paul’s autobiographical confessions to paint rather a picture of a zealous Jewish nationalist whose driving concern was to cleanse Israel of Gentiles as well as Jews who had lax attitudes toward the Torah. Running the risk of anachronism, Wright points to a contemporary version of the pre-Christian Saul: Yigal Amir, the zealous Torah-loyal Jew who assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin for exchanging Israel’s land for peace. Wright writes:
"Jews like Saul of Tarsus were not interested in an abstract, ahistorical system of salvation... They were interested in the salvation which, they believed, the one true God had promised to his people Israel." (pp. 32, 33)
Wright maintains that as a Christian, Paul continued to challenge paganism by taking the moral high ground of the creational monotheist. The doctrine of justification was not what Paul preached to the Gentiles as the main thrust of his gospel message; it was rather “the thing his converts most needed to know in order to be assured that they really were part of God’s people” after they had responded to the gospel message.
Even while taking the gospel to the Gentiles, however, Paul continued to criticize Judaism “from within” even as he had as a zealous Pharisee. But whereas his mission before was to root out those with lax attitudes toward the Torah, now his mission was to demonstrate that God’s covenant faithfulness (righteousness) has already been revealed in Jesus Christ.
At this point Wright carefully documents Paul’s use of the controversial phrase “God’s righteousness” and draws out the implications of his meaning against the background of a Jewish concept of justification. The righteousness of God and the righteousness of the party who is “justified” cannot be confused because the term bears different connotations for the judge than for the plaintiff or defendant. The judge is “righteous” if his or her judgment is fair and impartial; the plaintiff or defendant is “righteous” if the judge rules in his or her favor. Hence:
"If we use the language of the law court, it makes no sense whatsoever to say that the judge imputes, imparts, bequeaths, conveys or otherwise transfers his righteousness to either the plaintiff or the defendant. Righteousness is not an object, a substance or a gas which can be passed across the courtroom. For the judge to be righteous does not mean that the court has found in his favor. For the plaintiff or defendant to be righteous does not mean that he or she has tried the case properly or impartially. To imagine the defendant somehow receiving the judge’s righteousness is simply a category mistake. That is not how the language works." (p. 98)
However, Wright makes the important observation that even with the forensic metaphor, Paul’s theology is not so much about the courtroom as it is about God’s love.
Righteousness is not an impersonal, abstract standard, a measuring-stick or a balancing scale. That was, and still is, a Greek view. Righteousness, Biblically speaking, grows out of covenant relationship. We forgive because we have been forgiven (Matt. 18:21-35); “we love" because God “first loved us” (1 John 4:19). Love is the fulfillment of the law (Rom. 13:8, 10, Gal 5:14, Jam. 2:8). Paul even looked forward to a day when “we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad” (2 Cor. 5:10), and he acknowledged that his clear conscience did not necessarily ensure this verdict (1 Cor. 4:4), but he was confident nevertheless. Paul did in fact testify of his clear conscience: “For our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, we have had our conversation [i.e., behavior] in the world, and more abundantly to you-ward” (2 Cor. 1:12). He was aware that he had not yet “attained” (Phil. 3:12-14), that he still struggled with the flesh, yet he was confident of the value of his performance (1 Cor. 9:27). These are hardly the convictions of someone who intends to rest entirely on the merits of an alien righteousness imputed to his or her account.
Wright went on to flesh out the doctrine of justification in Galatians, Philippians, and Romans. The “works of the law” are not proto-Pelagian efforts to earn salvation, but rather “sabbath [keeping], food-laws, circumcision” (p. 132). Considering the controversy in Galatia, Wright writes:
"Despite a long tradition to the contrary, the problem Paul addresses in Galatians is not the question of how precisely someone becomes a Christian, or attains to a relationship with God….The problem he addresses is: should his ex-pagan converts be circumcised or not? Now this question is by no means obviously to do with the questions faced by Augustine and Pelagius, or by Luther and Erasmus. On anyone’s reading, but especially within its first-century context, it has to do quite obviously with the question of how you define the people of God: are they to be defined by the badges of Jewish race, or in some other way? Circumcision is not a ‘moral’ issue; it does not have to do with moral effort, or earning salvation by good deeds. Nor can we simply treat it as a religious ritual, then designate all religious ritual as crypto-Pelagian good works, and so smuggle Pelagius into Galatia as the arch-opponent after all. First-century thought, both Jewish and Christian, simply doesn’t work like that…. [T]he polemic against the Torah in Galatians simply will not work if we ‘translate’ it into polemic either against straightforward self-help moralism or against the more subtle snare of ‘legalism’, as some have suggested. The passages about the law only work — and by ‘work’ I mean they will only make full sense in their contexts, which is what counts in the last analysis — when we take them as references to the Jewish law, the Torah, seen as the national charter of the Jewish race." (pp. 120-122)
The debate about justification, then, “wasn’t so much about soteriology as about ecclesiology; not so much about salvation as about the church.” (p. 119)
To summarize the theology of Paul in his epistles, the apostle mainly spent time arguing to those whom he were sending letters that salvation in Christ was available to all men without distinction. Jews and Gentiles alike may accept the free gift; it was not limited to any one group. Paul was vehement about this, especially in his letter to the Romans. As such, I will finish this post off by summarizing the letter itself, so as to provide Biblical support for the premises of the NPP and for what the scholars I referenced have thus far argued.
After his introduction in the epistle to an already believing and mostly Gentile audience (who would've already been familiar with the gospel proclaimed in verses 3-4), Paul makes a thematic statement in 1:16: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.” This statement is just one of many key statements littered throughout the book of Romans that give us proper understanding of the point Paul wished to make to the interlocutors of his day, namely, salvation is available to all, whether Jew or Gentile.
In 1:16 Paul sets out a basic theme of his message in the letter to the Romans. All who believed, whether they be Jew or Gentile, were saved by the power of the gospel. The universal nature of salvation was explicitly stated. The gospel saved all without distinction, whether Jew or Greek; salvation was through the gospel of Jesus Christ. Immediately after this thematic declaration, Paul undertakes to show the universal nature of sin and guilt. In 1:18-32 Paul shows how the Gentile is guilty before God. Despite evidence of God and his attributes, which is readily available to all, they have failed to honor YHVH as God and have exchanged His glory for idolatrous worship and self-promotion. As a consequence, God handed them over in judgment (1:18-32). Paul moves to denunciation of those who would judge others while themselves being guilty of the very same offenses (2:1-5) and argues that all will be judged according to their deeds (2:6). This judgment applies to all, namely, Jew and Greek (2:9-10). This section serves as somewhat of a transition in Paul’s argument. He has highlighted the guilt of the Gentiles (1:18ff) and will shortly outline the guilt of the Jew (2:17-24). The universal statement of 2:1-11 sets the stage for Paul’s rebuke of Jewish presumption. It was not possession of the Law which delivered; it was faithful obedience. It is better to have no Law and yet to obey the essence of the Law (2:12-16) than to have the Law and not obey (2:17-3:4). Paul then defends the justice of God’s judgment (3:5-8), which leads to the conclusion that all (Jew and Gentile) are guilty before God (3:9).
Paul argues that it was a mistaken notion to think that salvation was the prerogative of the Jew only. This presumption is wrong for two reasons. First, it leads to the mistaken assumption that only Jews were eligible for this vindication (Paul deals with this misunderstanding in chapter 4 where he demonstrates that Abraham was justified by faith independently of the Law and is therefore the father of all who believe, Jew and Gentile alike). Second, it leads to the equally mistaken conclusion that all who were Jews are guaranteed of vindication. Paul demonstrates how this perspective, which would call God’s integrity into question since Paul was assuming many Jews would not experience this vindication, was misguided. He did this by demonstrating that it was never the case that all physical descendants of Israel (Jacob) were likewise recipients of the promise. In the past (9:6-33) as in the present (at that time; 11:1-10), only a remnant was preserved and only a remnant would experience vindication. Paul also argued that the unbelief of national Israel (the non-remnant) had the purpose of extending the compass of salvation. The unbelief of one group made the universal scope of the gospel possible. This universalism was itself intended to bring about the vindication of the unbelieving group (11:11-16). As a result of faith, all (Jew and Gentile) could be branches of the olive tree (11:17-24). Since faith in Christ was necessary to remain grafted into the tree, no one could boast of his position. All, Jew and Gentile alike, were dependent upon the mercy and grace of God. As a result of God’s mysterious plan, He would bring about the vindication of His people (11:25-27). [Note: It is this author's belief that this vindication occurred around 66-70 AD, with the Parousia of Christ's Church; this author is Full-Preterist in their Eschatology.]

I never thought I would ever enter one of these "Entitled" subreddits with a story of my own before, but apparently, the fates have decreed otherwise, for last week, I too, was blessed to be in the presence of a Karen. An EB. A whackjob. Whatever you want to call her.
The lady in question is someone whom I shall refer to, going forward, as "Hyacinth", mostly because she acts a LOT like Hyacinth Bucket from the Britcom "Keeping up Appearances". For those familiar with the TV show, why she has earned this moniker will soon become painfully obvious.
To continue...
I met Hyacinth about a year ago. Some friends and I were setting up a public exhibition, and I had volunteered to be one of the tour-guides, to explain said-exhibition to potential museum visitors, and guide them through the photographs, antiques, and other things that made up our display. One day, a friend texted me if I was free that Friday to meet-and-greet a group of people who were coming to see the exhibit. I said "yes".
Among this group was Hyacinth.
I did not at the time have any inkling of how bad this would get.
Fast forward about six months, then.
In the short time I've known her, a few things have become painfully obvious about Hyacinth - she loves - LOVES - LOOOVES (did I say 'loves'?) to talk about her family, her relatives, who she's related to, how she's related to them, why, what they do, how much they earn, how much they're worth, who else she knows, who her friends are, what they do, how much they earn, and how much they're worth. The words "Millionaire" and "Billionaire" pop up so often, you'd think you were reading the Forbes List. And she would talk about them for AGES - what should be a five-minute phone-call would turn into a 30 minute lecture about how well-connected she is.
For the most part, she was generally civil. She invited me out to meals with her friends, she asked me to tell them about myself...always, again, for some reason, with heavy emphasis on family history and connections and occupations and jobs and stuff. By now I had accepted that she was just weird, and eccentric and whatever. Takes all types, as they say, and I assumed that was it.
Something to know about the two of us is that we're both members of a local club. This club is a cultural club, dedicated to the promotion and preservation of our shared ethnic heritage. There's the main club, and then there's the smaller youth-group within the main club. Said youth-group is run by a friend, and we have a FB group. In this group we share videos, recipes, photos of food, family, friends, events we went to, or hosted, or participated in, and occasionally, historical stuff related to our culture - photographs, antiques, family heirlooms, and such-like.
The reason for this post is because of what happened about a week ago - in this group.
I had written a FB post about similar such organisations as our club, and a bit about their history, how they had formed, why, and where at. For visual interest, I'd added a photograph into the post, which was of the first-ever such club, at its formation, which was WELL OVER 100 years ago (our club doesn't go back that far!!).
I posted it in one group on FB and then shared it into the youth-group's FB group as well, and just...left it.
In a matter of a couple of hours, Hyacinth was attacking me on FB.
Which members of this photograph are my ancestors? Which ones are my relatives? Which ones are my family?? I told her none of them are - it's a historical photo in the public domain, it was relevant to what I was writing, it was relevant to our group, I shared it. End of story.
No, not good enough.
She immediately demanded to know by what right I shared this photograph, whether I'd asked anybody's permission, and why I hadn't contacted the descendants of the people in the photograph - which is WELL OVER 100 years old - 120+, to give you an idea.
I told her I had no idea how to do that, even if I had the names. She got furious and demanded I contact these people (how??) and ask their permission, or she would, and get me sued. She was also FURIOUS that I dared to share the photo in another group, which wasn't about our club, or culture, or heritage - and that I have NO RIGHT to do so!!
I'm like - that's my damn FB group - you don't have any right to tell me what I can or can't share in my own group. You don't get to dictate to me how I use my social media account.
But no, not good enough. She went on a diatribe that lasted two days, and a messenger diatribe that lasted at least two hours. Now she's threatening to send emails and screenshots and whatever, because I dared to share a public domain photograph, to some people who she says are SUPER RICH and SUPER INFLUENTIAL and SHE KNOWS THEM and THEY'LL SUE ME!!
Anyway, I reported her to our group-admin, who is my friend, who reported her to the club committee, citing harassment of a member as the reason.
The committee is currently in conference about this (and other incidents) surrounding Hyacinth - to decide what to do with her, finally, at long-last. According to my friend, Hyacinth has made loads of enemies, has done nothing but complain, has made outrageous suggestions to the club, and has attacked at least 2 or 3 other members - my incident is just the most recent one IN THE LAST THREE MONTHS!!
I'm waiting on my friend to provide an update about this, and if necessary, for me to provide evidence of the encounter.
My friend was shocked that this happened - and frankly, so was I - that Hyacinth was this aggressive about something which is REALLY a non-issue. We both agreed that any friendship that existed between us and her, was now fully, and completely dissolved.
Hyacinth is not going to like that - as I said - she's all about bragging and connections and who she knows and how famous they are...she's not going to like this at all. Especially if they kick her out of the club.

Why being transgender is not a sin, by MARK WINGFIELD NOVEMBER 9, 2018

Link to original post: https://baptistnews.com/article/why-being-transgender-is-not-a-sin/#.YYk6tE7MK72
I recently met a lovely young family in the northern suburbs of Dallas. They told me they previously attended a large Baptist church there – until their high school son became their daughter.
The mother was committed to her volunteer work in the church, and when she told the pastor who supervised that ministry area that her child was transgender, the pastor said: “That’s fine. We love everybody here. But it’s still a sin.”
“Blah, blah, blah, but….” Whatever comes after the “but” always negates whatever nice things were said in the first part of the sentence. Beware of the “but.”
Some would look kindly on the suburban pastor’s response because, after all, the pastor didn’t kick the family out of the church or condemn the teenager straight to hell. But.
Even among Christians who appear kind or progressive, too often the existence of someone who identifies as transgender gets chalked up to “sin.” No doubt that’s the root reason so many Christians happily pile on against transgender persons and their family members about bathrooms and schools, because in their heart of hearts, they don’t understand transgender identity and simply default to thinking it is a sinful lifestyle choice.

I think we all can agree that a “sin” is something we do that we shouldn’t do, something we have a choice about. If I eat an entire half-gallon of ice cream, I am likely guilty of the sin of gluttony. I didn’t have to eat the ice cream. If I fixate on why other people are more athletic and agile than me in my mid-life body, I probably am guilty of the sin of envy. There is a way for me to redirect my thoughts to avoid envy.
The same is not true of transgender identity. Emphatically and conclusively, this is not a choice. It is who a person is. Did you choose to have red hair? Did you choose to be tall or short? Did you choose to have the genetic markers you have? Of course not. Transgender persons are simply acknowledging that the gender identity assigned to them at birth because of physical anatomy does not match the brain, biochemical and genetic gender identity they know inside.
Since writing a column two years ago about understanding transgender identity – an opinion article that has been read more than 1 million times and led to giving a TED Talk on the same subject – I have conversed with hundreds of transgender persons and family members of transgender persons. That’s not just ministerially speaking. It really has been hundreds. Every one of those transgender persons has told me that they knew from their earliest awareness – from the time they were 4, 5 or 6 years old – that the gender anatomy they showed on the outside did not match who they knew they were on the inside.
There is an increasing body of scientific evidence to back up this assertion. For example, a 2008 study published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior found that female fetuses with increased prenatal exposure to androgens are more likely to have gender nonconforming behaviors. Researchers – including some theologically conservative ones – point to environmental factors that may be responsible for what appears to be an increase in transgender identity through endocrine disruption beginning in the 20th century. This is linked to industrialization, development of new chemicals and medicines.
But these environmental factors only explain an increase, not the presence of transgender identity, which has been documented for centuries. The American Academy of Pediatrics (not to be confused with a small association of conservative pediatricians often cited by critics of transgender rights) recently released a new policy statement explaining that variation in gender identity is a normal part of human diversity. For an excellent, lay-friendly description of the emerging science of transgender identity, look to this report from Harvard University.

I could quote chapter and verse for study after study, and that would not change the minds of some people who are determined to label as sinful anything they do not understand, usually because “the Bible says so.” In these cases, I ask people to tell me where in the Bible being transgender is condemned as sinful. The only answer usually offered is Deuteronomy 22:5, which says: “A woman shall not wear a man’s apparel, nor shall a man put on a woman’s garment; for whoever does such things is abhorrent to the Lord your God.”
Here’s the problem with even a literal reading of that passage: Transgender persons will tell you they are not “men” putting on “women’s” clothing or “women” putting on “men’s” clothing. Instead, they are declaring an identity much deeper than clothing; they are saying that they are dressing outwardly to match who they know they are on the inside. This is not cross-dressing, which is not the subject of this column. Cross-dressing is about finding pleasure in wearing certain clothes. Being transgender is about finding mental and spiritual peace by aligning outward presentation with inner being.
Occasionally, people will point to Genesis 1:27 as a condemnation of transgender identity: “male and female he created them.” Most transgender persons will tell you they believe God has, in fact, created them as either male or female; the problem is how they have been labeled by others who are not God.
Some people today identify as “gender fluid,” meaning they find in themselves bits of both male and female identity and cannot definitely say they are one or the other. While this may sound unsettling to some of us on first hearing, a return to Genesis might help. There we also learn that God created both “night” and “day” and that God separated “land” from “sea.” Yet we have no problem understanding the existence of dawn and dusk or marshes and everglades. Also, the point of Genesis 1 is inclusion, not exclusion. The ancient text tells us that God created everything: “and,” not “or.”
The other lesson we need to keep learning from Genesis is that all humanity is created “in the image of God.” Everybody. Without exception. When we look at others who are different than us and try to see in them the image of God, we gain new understanding and empathy.
Sometimes well-meaning Christians get this part but still can’t get over the “sin” label. So they will say things like, “All of us are sinners in God’s eyes, and it’s just that my sin is different than your sin.” That’s another way of saying, “I love you, but….”
There’s an easy way to remember why this is wrong: Transgender identity is about who a person is. It is about their fundamental being as humans created by God in God’s image – an image that God has declared to be good.

This is pretty light hearted imo (Also I have literally never posted on Reddit, lmk if I need to change this post in any way!)
So I follow the Tumblr AITA blog and recently there was a post from a film bro. He was asking if he was an asshole for calling his coworker stupid for liking Avatar (the blue people one).
To summarize his initial submission, he gave brief information on how he and his coworker (emphasis on him calling this guy his coworker) had movie nights. He made a point of saying his coworker had terrible movie taste which was why he often chose movies. This one time, though, his friend suggested watching Avatar.
This dude DESPISES the movie. Enough that, when his coworker gave reasons for why he liked the movie, this dude called him stupid. Multiple times. And then got into an argument bad enough the coworker slept on the couch. I'll get to that in a second.
Dude was very clearly expecting Tumblr to be on his side.
When I say this guy was an asshole, I'm saying that around 97% of people voted him an asshole. The poll ended recently, but the guy decided to make a response post. The AITA blog will usually reblog additional info posts, but this guy for most of this response was antagonizing the people who called him an asshole (myself included - some of the comments he addressed I had made in my initial judgement). He also doubled down on his friend being stupid because of having a bad taste in films.
The ONLY reason the AITA blog reblogged the response is because he - very briefly - clarified the couch comment.
Apparently, the guy wasn't just his coworker. He was his roommate too. (He never clarified if they share a bed.)
This is where I decided to be petty.
At the end of his response post, he claimed that people online couldn't think critically. And something about just how insufferable this guy was, not only in how he talked about media, but how he had no remorse for how terribly he spoke about and to his friend.
So me, being an English-loving and majoring college student who has been feeling a void at the lack of essays I have been required to write now that classes are out, decided to write a critical analysis of the post.
I initially focused on the response post, figuring that I would just implicitly write about the initial one. He had bullet points of the various comments the Tumblrinas made so I bullet pointed my analysis too. - I spoke about EACH of the points he made. - I applied rhetorical analysis to his response and, eventually, his initial submission (because this man did not comprehend that people were not, in fact, just mad at him because he disliked Avatar). - I analyzed the hell out of his tone. - I quoted exact sentences from the post to analyze specifically. - I CITED which paragraphs the sentences were from. - I brought in STATISTICS - twice! (I wasn't expecting this when I started writing the analysis, but got excited when I realized I could include it.) - I wrote a CONCLUSION too!
This man implied he wanted people to think critically about his post. So I chose to do a critical analysis of it.
I don't know, I stumbled upon the response late at night and the small idea to point put flaws in the logic of the response spiraled into an essay on a Tumblr post. But I actually did have fun! It's only been a couple weeks since classes ended, and while essays aren't the most fun, I've found myself missing doing critical analysis essays.
My professors and high school English teachers would be so proud. But also so sad that I never spent this much effort on my essays but spent it on a post the op will likely never read :')

Saturday 18 May 2024
Today in Philosophy of History
Further Elaborations on the Coming Coeval Age
My essay “The Coming Coeval Age” has appeared in Isonomia Quarterly for summer 2024. Last year I contributed an essay to the initial number of the journal. As with my recent paper in the Journal of Big History, “A Complexity Ladder for Big History,” this most recent essay isn’t narrowly about philosophy of history, but there are many philosophy of history themes in it.
The journal’s interest in the theme of isonomia was my point of departure for considering the institutional structure of civilization at the largest conceivable scales. What is isonomia? There is a passage in Book III of Herodotus known as the constitutional debate in which three speakers argue for the best form of government, with these three being monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy. Here is the first of three speakers in Herodotus advocating for isonomia:

“Otanes urged that they should resign the government into the hands of the whole body of the Persians, and his words were as follows: ‘To me it seems best that no single one of us should henceforth be ruler, for that is neither pleasant nor profitable. Ye saw the insolent temper of Cambyses, to what lengths it went, and ye have had experience also of the insolence of the Magian: and how should the rule of one alone be a well-ordered thing, seeing that the monarch may do what he desires without rendering any account of his acts? Even the best of all men, if he were placed in this disposition, would be caused by it to change from his wonted disposition: for insolence is engendered in him by the good things which he possesses, and envy is implanted in man from the beginning; and having these two things, he has all vice: for he does many deeds of reckless wrong, partly moved by insolence proceeding from satiety, and partly by envy. And yet a despot at least ought to have been free from envy, seeing that he has all manner of good things. He is however naturally in just the opposite temper towards his subjects; for he grudges to the nobles that they should survive and live, but delights in the basest of citizens, and he is more ready than any other man to receive calumnies. Then of all things he is the most inconsistent; for if you express admiration of him moderately, he is offended that no very great court is paid to him, whereas if you pay court to him extravagantly, he is offended with you for being a flatterer. And the most important matter of all is that which I am about to say:—he disturbs the customs handed down from our fathers, he is a ravisher of women, and he puts men to death without trial. On the other hand the rule of many has first a name attaching to it which is the fairest of all names, that is to say “Equality”; next, the multitude does none of those things which the monarch does: offices of state are exercised by lot, and the magistrates are compelled to render account of their action: and finally all matters of deliberation are referred to the public assembly. I therefore give as my opinion that we let monarchy go and increase the power of the multitude; for in the many is contained everything’.”

The three forms of government—monarchical, oligarchical, and democratic—are a perennial theme of Greek political thought that continues to echo through the history of Western civilization. Book III of Aristotle’s Politics goes into this in some detail.
After sending my essay off to Isonomia Quarterly I realized that one of the fundamental ambiguities about the idea of isonomia—and I would have included a footnote on this if I had thought of it sooner—is the ambiguity implicit in speaking in terms of the same law. What is it that is “the same” when we speak of the same law? “The same law” could mean that every particular law would apply to every particular person, or “the same law” could mean that the totality of the law, that is, the whole body of law, applies to the totality of the population. A body of law might involve different laws that apply differently to different persons, so that the second of the two senses does not entail the first of the two senses. If you read my essay you’ll find that I argue that the Greeks understood isonomia in the latter sense, so I won’t repeat that argument or the sources I cite for it here. But the fact that we might interpret a fundamental political idea in different ways poses the question of how these fundamental ideas outlined in antiquity apply to us today, if they do apply, and how they ought to apply now and in the future.
How will these traditional ideas be interpreted in future iterations of human society that might differ quite considerably from the world that we inhabit? How are we to understand isonomia within the context of a spacefaring civilization? For that matter, how are we to understand any classical Greek political theory in the context of future changes to society? For Westerners, this is our heritage, and how this tradition adapts or is adapted to changed conditions will give shape to the ongoing tradition of Western civilization.
In my essay I suggest that, on Earth to date, the expansion of political regimes has constituted what I call synchronic isonomia, when societies are distributed synchronically, that is to say, when they interact in the present across geographical distances. In a specifically legal context, this means the iteration of a body of law across a region of space. The possibility of what Frank White calls Large-Scale Space Migration would initially constitute synchronic expansion on a scale greater than that possible on Earth, but, if continued, it would eventually cross a threshold of diachronic isonomia, that is to say, when societies are distributed diachronically over time. In a specifically legal context, again, this means the iteration of a body of law, the same law, over a period of time. The strange, seemingly paradoxical aspect of this way of thinking is that the human scale of time could be distributed over a much larger cosmological scale of time while retaining its character as distinctively human history. I will try to explain how this could come about, but first I want to point out a peculiarity of terrestrial history that we haven’t seen as a peculiarity.
We are familiar with the idea that we see the universe form a peculiar point of view because we see it from the surface of a planet. Our planetary perspective has been the focus of the Copernican revolution, which has taught us that our apparently centrality in the universe is an artifact of our limited and parochial perspective. The Copernican revolution taught us to transcend our planetary perspective and to see the universe from a non-terrestrial perspective, but there is another aspect of the Copernican revolution that we haven’t yet explored, and that is seeing history from a non-terrestrial perspective. Part of this non-terrestrial perspective is simply to understand that, just as we are not in the center of space, we are also not in the center of time. But there’s more to it than this.
Einstein’s theory of relativity has made it possible for us to see time in a new way, and this can change the way we see history. In many of my episodes I have talked about the need to address the disconnect between philosophies of time and philosophies of history. History is constructed out of time, so a radical reconceptualization of time suggests a radical reconceptualization of history. The theory of relativity is such a radical reconceptualization of time, but many of the influences of relativity and gravity upon time are usually not noticed on a terrestrial scale, and all human history to date has occurred on terrestrial scale.
We can see the effects of relativity when we look out into the cosmos and use instruments to observe cosmological distances over which relatively is relevant, and to observe bodies so dense that they change the structure of spacetime. To date, our technologies have allowed us to measure the relativity of time under the influence of acceleration and gravitation, but we may, at some point in our history, develop technologies that allow us to interact with the universe at a scale at which relativity will change our history. When this eventuality comes to pass, we will eventually be forced to notice things about our history that hadn’t previously been problematic.
Our history to date has been the simplest possible history because it has all transpired on Earth. Earth is our sole inertial frame of reference for all historical events. There are relativistic effects within this inertial frame of reference, but they can only be detected by instruments of extreme precision because the influence of relativity lies below the threshold of human perception. For example, every planet drags its spacetime around with it as it rotates, which is known as frame-dragging. And even the relatively crude instruments of the nineteenth century could detect the perihelion precession of Mercury, which is an observable relativistic perturbation of the orbit of Mercury. This was first observed and noted to diverge from Newtonian predictions in 1859. These relativistic effects are, however, well below the threshold of impacting human history.
Technologies could change this. Relativistic space travel would be such a technology. This has been made famous by the so-called “twins paradox.” The twins paradox is invoked with greatest effect by the use of individuals to illustrate the difference between two clocks in different inertial frames of reference—usually a set of twins. This was called a paradox because it was initially thought to be impossible. We also saw this use of individuals to demonstrate the poignancy of time dilation in the film Interstellar. Here it is a father and daughter who are separated, with the father experiencing an accelerated inertial frame of reference, so that he returns, still a young man, to find his daughter dying as an old woman. This is great for drama, but this isn’t how any relativistic space settlement effort is going to play out, unless someone purposefully arranges something like this as a stunt.
Let us consider a simple example of what is more likely to occur. Suppose a settlement on another world established by several thousands of individuals, maybe tens or hundreds of thousands, like a small city, who travel to another planetary system, tens or hundreds or thousands of light years from Earth. The passengers on the starship in their accelerated inertial framework will experience time dilation, and they will preserve the cultural milieu of Earth has it was upon their launch. When they establish their settlement, there will be two human histories that bifurcate at the point in time when the interstellar settlement initiative was inaugurated.
However, the larger population on Earth will continue to drive cultural evolution at a far faster rate than in the settlement, while, in the settlement, human beings will be subjected to radically different selection pressures than prevailed on Earth, and they will also be a small community likely to retain the cultural milieu they possessed when they left Earth. We would then have two human histories, offset in time by the discontinuity of the relativistic travel time from Earth to the location of the settlement. For example, if the Earth and the settlement are a hundred light years apart, there would be a temporal discontinuity of a century. Life would go on at Earth, and a century later things would be different, but a century later the settlement would just be founded on the basis of Earth’s culture of a century before. This is a kind of historical complexity that we do not have today, but which could happen in the future.
Now imagine not one settlement, but a hundred or a thousand such settlements, each representing a temporal discontinuity from Earth’s history. A hundred settlements of ten thousand persons each would be an effort involving only a million persons, which is a very small proportion of the total human population; Earth wouldn’t even notice the absence of a million persons. Further, imagine travel among these settlements by relativistic spacecraft, and then the history of those who travel between settlements will be even more complex. In this context, depending upon the location of settlements relative to each other, and the date at which the settlement initiative was undertaken, an individual could effectively time travel into the past by traveling outward from Earth to a settlement that preserves the historical milieu at Earth at the time of its departure. You could not return to Earth without finding yourself accelerated into the future, but you could travel further outward to a settlement established from earlier in Earth’s history.
We get a similar, if slower result, if we substitute sub-relativistic spacecraft in conjunction with artificially induced torpor or hibernation—space arks, if you will. A slow boat to the stars would likewise preserve the culture of Earth from the time of its departure, with settlers being roused and resuming their lives once they reached the end of their journey, effectively cut off from a return to their familiar terrestrial milieu, but they would be able to visit other historical peer milieux if they take another slow boat further out into the cosmos.
The kind of distributed temporality that I am describing would achieve its greatest extent, and its greatest historical complexity, in the case of interstellar expansion. However, something similar could be realized on Earth at a smaller scale. Imagine a large scale hibernation project on Earth, such that about 10,000 persons are involved, enough so that there could be a rotating crew of a dozen or so that stays awake to tend the rest to make sure this continues to operate as intended. At some appointed time in the future, the whole community could be brought out of their hibernation and they would bring with them the culture of Earth from their date when they entered into hibernation, now displaced into the future. This would make it possible for temporally distributed communities to appear on Earth, without travel to other worlds or the use of relativistic technology. There are several science fiction stories with something like this as their approximate premise.
Whether through relativistic travel or human hibernation, historical communities could be preserved from all eras into some indefinite future, and in that indefinite future, these distinct historical communities would be synchronically present. This is what I call coevalism, when all ages of history are equally accessible. The idea of coevalism occurred to me many years ago, and not in connection with relativistic travel; I was thinking about the increasing fidelity of recording technologies. Written language is the most rudimentary form of recording technology, and is allows us the most rudimentary form of time travel, by being able to share the thoughts of those long dead. Since the industrial revolution, technologies have become much more sophisticated, with photographs, film, and sound recordings, with always-increasing fidelity to the original.
The rapid growth of computer technology and telecommunications in recent decades has made us aware that, if this arc of technological development continues, we will have nearly-perfect fidelity recordings. But in addition to recordings, we could generate states-of-affairs that never existed in fact, as in fantasy and science fiction, or we could generate the milieux of the past, both with a degree of fidelity equal to that of the present. Computers are already sufficiently sophisticated to generate simple films, and the reconstruction of past milieux can be done without computers as well.
In the original Westworld film on 1973, a past milieu was re-created using robots. Robotics hasn’t yet achieved this level of realism, but we could do this today with human actors, and we may yet do so someday with robots. In fact, we do this in a limited way. Theme parks re-create fantasy worlds populated with actors who make fantasy characters come to life. So coevalism can be realized at smaller scales than sparefaring civilizations, but it would be in a spacefaring civilizations with relativistic space travel in which the possibilities of coevalism would come to their fullest expression, and in which history would achieve its greatest complexity.
History is already extraordinarily complex, but I said earlier than our terrestrial history is the simplest history possible given the spacetime structure of the universe. It is when we begin distributing our civilization in cosmological time that historical complexity will cease to be a single linear continuum. The possibilities of spacefaring histories will be both facilitated and limited by our technology. These possibilities will also be facilitated and limited by the actual spacetime structure of the universe, which is a function of the distribution of matter in the universe. Just as terrestrial history has been shaped by oceans, mountain ranges, and rivers, cosmological history is shaped by stars, gravitation, and expansion, and human history that takes place within this cosmological context will be shaped by these forces. The point I want to make is that, while human history is complex, we are not necessarily limited by the complexity of the single inertial frame of reference of our homeworld.
When multiple inertial frames of reference are available to us, and travel between then is possible, the possible structures of history will dramatically expand, and with these possibilities human experience will dramatically expand, and I hope you can see how this can give a whole new meaning to the idea of speculative philosophy of history. In the conventional distinction between analytical philosophy of history and substantive philosophy of history, analytical philosophy of history is, according to Danto, “…philosophy applied to the special conceptual problems which arise out of the practice of history,” while substantive philosophy of history is a philosophical account of the historical process itself. This same distinction has also been called the distinction between critical and speculative philosophy of history by William Dray, and the distinction between formal and material philosophy of history by Maurice Mandelbaum. Here I emphasize speculative philosophy of history as that which reflects uon the actual historical process.
In addition to the speculative philosophy of history that considers the historical process, we can also imagine a speculative philosophy of history that concerns itself with the implications of speculative states-of-affairs upon history yet to come—historical processes not yet realized, but which may be realized someday. Many of the speculative states-of-affairs I can imagine involve human exploration and expansion into the cosmos. The speculative states-of-affairs we might encounter in the wider universe could involve scientific discoveries not yet made and technologies not yet constructed, the histories of life on other worlds and the histories of alien civilizations, as well as the histories that we will create for ourselves. It’s a big universe, and we might discover any number of unlikely or unprecedented existents.
In my episode on a complexity ladder for big history I argued that there may be distinctive emergents from historical knowledge, that is to say, the quantitative growth of historical knowledge may pass a threshold to become a qualitative change in historical understanding. What kind of emergents could these be? For example, an increase in the knowledge of our own history can change our understanding of ourselves. We are seeing this with the use of the genetic record to reconstruct the sequence by which human beings distributed themselves across Earth. In this way, epistemic emergents reshape our past and our understanding of ourselves.
In addition to these emergents from knowledge of our past, there may yet come emergents that arise from a temporally distributed civilization and the advent of coevalism. A temporally distributed civilization could also give rise to emergents in historical knowledge. The dawning realization of epistemic emergents yet to come in the future will shape our conception of what we can become (in contradistinction to increased knowledge of the past shaping what we are), reshaping our future, and we will need these epistemic emergents from a history of a greater order of complexity so as to understand the more complex world coming into being, and which our descendants will inhabit. Without these epistemic emergents we would not be able to understand the more complex world arising out of these novel technologies and the world they will bring into being. The future of philosophy of history has never been brighter, as we see that it will come to grappled with ever-larger and more complex problems.

Video Presentation

Youtube: https://youtu.be/fvmCoRrBiEs
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/C7IUqNAtSgQ/
Odysee: https://odysee.com/@Geopolicraticus:7/the-coming-coeval-age:d

Podcast Edition

Spotify: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/xkVzIKAcIJb
Amazon: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/a31b8276-53cd-4723-b6ad-a39c8faa4572/episodes/de1bbc0c-a72f-452b-a20d-40ccd56889e0/today-in-philosophy-of-history-the-coming-coeval-age
Iheartradio: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-today-in-philosophy-of-his-146507578/episode/the-coming-coeval-age-177527570/
​

Hi everyone. Can I get some tips and instructions on how to write a personal statement for Medical school and if I should send the same PS to different universities? I am an international student applying to schools in Europe.
Questions I have:

1. is there a word count and a certain structure I should follow?
   
2. should I write about my culture?
   
3. should I write about my familial background?
   
4. should I write about financial problems or will it affect my acceptance?
   
5. do I write about my hobbies even if it's cliche?
   
6. should I include quotes from people close to me like my mother? ( I read somewhere that you shouldn't include quotes from famous people, idk why.)
   

For starters I'll present Dr. Eshwar Mestec
Eshwar Mestec, a pioneering mind turned corrupt
Eshwar Mestec, a visionary ahead of his time, dreamt of unraveling the mysteries of Evergreen's origins. However, studying the world was a forbidden pursuit in his youth. So he waited, patiently enduring centuries of societal disapproval until finally, in 349AGE, curiosity bloomed. Eshwar seized this opportunity, embarking on groundbreaking research.
His brilliance shone through in his first project: investigating the properties of Aletine, the enigmatic gem. After 125 years, he presented his findings to Steffy and The One Hundred, garnering widespread acclaim. This success propelled him to publish numerous books and, centuries later, contribute to the creation of Evergreen's first encyclopedia in 678AGE. He even collaborated with Yeori Hetrayo on longevity research.
The origins of the obsession
Eshwar's crowning achievement arrived around 2000AGE. He discovered the Gray Realm, a hidden dimension defying existence for millennia. Not only did he unearth this realm, but he also devised a method for retrieving the dead and lost from within it. This accomplishment, however, came at a terrible cost. Years of relentless study bordering on obsession drove him to near-madness and inexplicably extended his lifespan, perhaps due to prolonged exposure to Dark Matter. When he published his document on the Gray Realm at the age of 4786, speculation swirled about the cause of his extended life.
Descent into darkness, the 7676AGE disaster
By 7676AGE, Eshwar's brilliance had morphed into a dangerous fixation. Obsessed with replicating Aletine to create a cheaper alternative, he amassed funding for millennia and established his own lab. Here, his focus turned to the rumored properties of the purple and orange heatherberry. In a ruthless act, he stole a staggering amount, over 70,000 berries, from the Gatosi farm, devastating their livelihood. After returning to his laboratory he went on a rampage successfully kidnapping over 60 people from various towns in the kingdom. His descent into madness culminated in the kidnapping of over 60 people, including a guard from the revered Steffy's Mansion, a previously unthinkable act.
These unfortunate souls were held captive for a horrific six years as Eshwar subjected them to his twisted experiments. Yeori Hetrayo broke under the thought of so many people being kept captives as guinea pigs for Eshwar’s horrific expirements. Yeori went to Steffy himself and reported her findings of Dr.Eshwar’s human experiments. At first Steffy didn’t believe a word considering how Eshwar was the brightest man in the kingdom and the oldest too, hence the wisest. Yeori brought even more evidence, including the dismembered remains of a 8 year old girl that Eshwar had kidnapped when she was only 2 years old, photos depicting Eshwar covered in blood holding the red hot remains of a young man aged around 19. The king had no choice but to send a highly militarized squadron of the best trained Aletinians to arrest Eshwar and stop him from torturing even more people. A 3 day long siege was launched on his laboratory and the surrounding villages were reduced to ruins as the brilliant scientist had managed to fully equip his laboratory with weapons that the Aletinian guard could not hold back against. By the end of it 58 people perished in the siege and a further 3765 were injured. The main cause for these civilian deaths was the use of biochemical weapons and Dark Matter energized weapons that Eshwar had created prototypes of. When the guards finally got a hold of Eshwar he was nowhere near who he used to be 6 years prior. He was eventually sent to the lowest quarters of Steffy’s Mansion and subjected to solitary confinement and mental torture to reconstruct his ravaged mind. After 5 years of the torture he was classified as perfectly sane and was released back into society to continue his studies. But not only his mental state was affected during those 5 years, his physical body was almost completely destroyed. During the siege he had lost both an arm and a leg and over the course of the 5 years his physical state was deteriorating. A famous quote from Yeori Hetrayo says “he looked like a living mummy, a sort of shell of what he used to be, slowly being turned into dust with a body so thin that veins looked like worms crawling throughout him and a skin so ghostly pale that it could rival even the whitest Heatherlean snow”. A brilliant mind was forever tainted. He now resides in Azalea, a shell of his former self.

Hello, below is a quote from another commenter in this group. I am not a catholic however I am interested in the religion. I’m interested in all religions. Catholicism is one I have yet to understand.
Why would a religion so powerful and important not stand for loving and accepting someone - anyone, the way that they are. Why would you follow a religion that is based off judgment?
I understand that it is important to live life based off morals. And I respect that. But why are the morals and rules of this religion so divided and sometimes hateful? Why not accept everyone, be kind to everyone? Why live your entire life with rules that could effect friendships, relationships, and possibly family?
I am asking genuinely
Can you please cite the Scripture or Tradition or Dogma or Theology in Catholicism that says it's about love and acceptance?
We must never accept or approve sin. That isn't truth or love. We must share God in His Truth, His Love and His Mercy. Love God, Love one another. ❤️
Here is counter to your assertion, in my mind.
Scripture: Jesus said, 49 I am come to cast fire on the earth; and what will I, but that it be kindled?
50 And I have a baptism wherewith I am to be baptized: and how am I straitened until it be accomplished?
51 Think ye, that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, no; but separation.
52 For there shall be from henceforth five in one house divided: three against two, and two against three.
53 The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against his father, the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother, the mother in law against her daughter in law, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.

Cawthon, Scott. The Bobbiedots Conclusion: An AFK Book (Five Nights at Freddy’s: Tales from the Pizzaplex #5). Scholastic Inc, 2023. 

Plotwise, there's certainly a lot at play here, but with an ensemble director like Joss Whedon at the helm, he manages to create amazing character dynamics and make everyone feel relevant on top of that. The film goes a different direction than you'd expect from a teamup movie and has our characters of strong personalities at odds with each other, which makes the stakes at hand feel way less hunky dory and more real and tangible. For example, something I never noticed prior to Captain America: Civil War was that Tony and Steve weren't particularly fond of each other with Tony mentioning how his father, Howard Stark, spoke highly of Cap all the time, but never supported him (Tony). In addition to that, Steve, having been the one to make the "sacrifice play" in his first outing, calls out Tony for fighting only for himself and not being the one who would ever make that call -- something that ultimately concludes Tony's character years later in Endgame. It's a dynamic that is pretty much the basis for the first three phases of the MCU happening the way they did and I'm very glad I rewatched this movie to notice the seeds of what became years later. Although they don't get much screentime together this time around, this also shows the believable friendly dynamic between Black Widow and Hawkeye, the two having been great friends in S.H.I.E.L.D. for years despite the latter being mentioned to have been sent on a mission to kill the former when they first met. That there was a detail I never caught before and it's told at an underrated moment where Black Widow is interrogating Loki on what his plan is -- Loki using Natasha's history to emotionally compromise her, eventually revealing that he will use their "monster" -- the Hulk -- against them. As far as Clint and Nat's dynamic, this movie was also the first mention of the famous unanswered MCU plot point known as Budapest, the question of which was answered in Phase 4's first film, Black Widow. The setup for so many significant MCU moments in this one film is astonishing and it succeeded in its own payoffs by both bringing all established heroes together and even including several supporting roles such as Agent Coulson and Dr. Selvig and giving them important roles.
The acting is also stellar as well; Robert Downey Jr. maintains his usual Tony Stark arrogant charm and witty charisma he had established in the first two Iron Man films, even improvising certain gags like him eating blueberries while talking about serious topics with Steve and Dr. Banner. As with the first Captain America film, Chris Evans continues to be one of my favorite parts of the MCU, exuberating that charisma of a soldier with a sense of duty who doesn't play around and puts the safety of others first -- the antithesis of what he suggests to Tony as I mentioned before. Like most Marvel movies, Cap also has some of the best quotes like when Romanoff suggests that Cap is dealing with gods to which Cap says, "There's only one God, ma'am, and I'm pretty sure He doesn't dress like that" -- a nice nod to comic book Captain America's Christianity. Up to this point, Chris Hemsworth has also been an exceptional Thor, demonstrating a more humble attitude toward Earth than he did in the first Thor movie while also acting vengeful like when he fights with Iron Man for getting in the way of him dealing with Loki. Being his first round as the Incredible Hulk, Mark Ruffalo does a pretty good job acting as Bruce Banner, maintaining a bashful, level headed demeanor when, secretly, he's "always angry", which allows him to control the Hulk persona a little more easily -- save for when he Hulks out due to the stress of the Helicarrier attack. Jeremy Renner wasn't given much to do in his small cameo in Thor, but he has more significant presence and character here with his dynamic with Natasha, as I mentioned, being the best part. As far as Natasha herself, Scarlett Johanssen shows much more acting ability here than her debut in Iron Man 2, showing she is much more prone to emotional breakdowns like when she acts emotionally compromised due to Loki taunting her about her past and later when she distresses over Bruce Banner Hulking out while she's stuck under debris. It was moments like this that turned Black Widow into more than just a badass beauty for me with her now being one of my favorite women in the MCU. Smaller roles like Clark Gregg as Agent Coulson and Colbie Smulders as Maria Hill are what you expect from those characters with Agent Coulson getting the most emotional moment in the film by being the one to die -- he comes back in the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. TV show, but at the time, this was the most emotional Marvel movie death apart from Uncle Ben in Raimi's Spider-Man. The acting of this movie would ultimately form the basis of these characters for their remaining MCU tenure and they would act very consistently for many movies to come.
Something that current movies in the MCU lack is good CGI and this movie has a lot of that, but it's very impressive CGI for that matter. With a whopping 2,200+ VFX shots, this film pretty much gave James Cameron's Avatar a run for its money (quite literally in terms of how fast it achieved $1 billion). The Iron Man suit CG is still a sight to behold with the contraption that removes his armor along the Stark Tower walkway being an impressive showcasing of digital effects as well as the evolution of Tony's technology. The Hulk CGI is also done well in how it captures Mark Ruffalo's face on the beast, which is something all Hulk actors have done, but, in my honest opinion, Ruffalo's facial capture looks the most natural; upon looking into the VFX shots of the movie, I discovered that Ruffalo also wore a motion capture suit with prosthetics on his upper body to emulate the Hulk's size. This was particularly useful in closeup shots such as when Thor and Hulk are fighting in the Helicarrier and made their interactions look more natural compared to the CGI dolls that have been used frequently in later Marvel projects. The look of the Helicarrier is also rather impressive with the ship being the largest ship put to screen in a Marvel project at that point and even the wideshots of it rising from the ocean present some clean, detailed CGI, making it look very lived in and used. Perhaps the most impressive use of CGI in the film is, surprisingly, the New York skyline during the final battle; potentially to avoid filming costs, ILM (Industrial Lighting and Magic) recreated the New York skyline in great detail and did an excellent job making it look like the real Manhattan with fictional landmarks (i.e.: Stark Tower). A well-known fact among Marvel superfans such as myself is that this film was almost canonical to The Amazing Spider-Man because Disney and Sony agreed to implement the Oscorp Tower from said film into the background somewhere in the final act. This idea was unfortunately abandoned, but it would have been an impressive connection between those franchises and, as of the present day, I am glad that Disney and Sony worked out a deal to implement a new version of Spider-Man into the MCU. That aside, the lengths to which this film went to make the CGI look natural was astounding and makes for some of the best VFX in Marvel before and since.
Shockingly for an MCU film, this soundtrack is actually decent as many sequences present what is perhaps the most iconic MCU theme song and superhero theme song in general, "The Avengers" by Alan Silvestri. Silvestri was previously in charge of the Captain America: The First Avenger soundtrack and, while his work wasn't too standout in that film, he more than exceled at giving the world the one theme song that most people besides Marvel superfans would associate with the Avengers. The swelling horns and heroic strings that display the triumph of the Avengers forming for the first time to save the world is so iconic, I am picturing the moment where it plays in the film as the camera circles around them forming up to take on the Chitauri invasion -- a very iconic group shot of the Avengers, for that matter. The formation of this team was not only a triumphant moment in-universe, but the fact that the theme is repeatedly used and reused for Avengers promotional material and in the following three sequels for that matter is a testament to its iconography and the impact the Avengers and other Marvel heroes have had on pop culture for the last decade and a half. I, personally, haven't listened to the rest of the soundtrack as I don't typically do that for film soundtracks, but the film score I could make out sounded pretty epic and befitting of the situations they were in, even the non-superhero action sequences such as the opening chase scene with Loki and co. running from Nick Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. forces. As with most of my reviews, I am often one to point out the vocal theme song made for the credits and in this case it's "Live to Rise" by Soundgarden. With the band having reformed around the time of this movie, this song was a hit upon release and, in my opinion, captivates the Avengers in their moment of triumph against Loki and the Chitauri. Rock songs have often been included at the end of superhero movies, even the 1990s Batman movies, and the Avengers has no shortage of music from and inspired by it on its aptly titled Avengers Assemble: Music from and Inspired by the Motion Picture soundtrack -- I even listen to the Shinedown song, "I'm Alive" while working out. Of all the MCU movies, this is by far the one in which I can say the most about the music and that shows just how relevant the team has become both in culture and musically.
With all that's become of superhero pop culture in this day and age, it's only fitting to say that The Avengers has played a significant part in that in more ways than one. With its familiar plotline full of excellent character relationships and dynamics, its great acting talents, impressive VFX, and actually competent music -- for an MCU movie that is -- it's no wonder that the Avengers superhero team and its characters have become one of the newest pop culture staples in recent memory. While sadly the former passion and talent of the MCU has mostly gone away, lest we not forget how this movie brought to the limelight the concept of an interconnected movie universe with shared characters that have strong enough personalities to expand into a mega multi-billion dollar franchise. If this film serves as a testament to me personally, it was the beginning of my superhero nerd culture with both the then-upcoming and already existing Spider-Man projects I invested in cementing the reasons why I love superheroes so much nowadays. To me and many others, they may have larger than life personas, but with actors and aspects of their characters portraying well the humanity of the heroes showcases why we more often than not return to see these characters go on new escapades and take on new challenges no matter how formulaic the movies might get with time. All that said, I give The Avengers a solid A and recommend it to anyone, comic book nerd and casual moviegoer alike.

…The manosphere claims its worldview is grounded in science, specifically the discipline of evolutionary psychology. That’s my discipline — I am an evolutionary psychologist and associate professor at UC Santa Barbara, the home of evolutionary psychology. In fact, it turns out incels have coopted some of my research to justify their ideology...
For example, incels maintain a wiki page of scientific citations they claim support their worldview — an annotated bibliography of misogyny. In one case, in a sort of Russian nesting doll of misrepresentation, the incel wiki quotes a paper citing a study of mine as demonstrating that women prefer dominant men — which they further twist into the incel notion that women actually prefer violent men as romantic partners.
Reading this entry, I thought, “That’s odd, I don’t remember ever publishing on dominance preferences — do the incels know my work better than I do?” No. I double-checked: That study didn’t even mention dominance preferences.
Curiously overlooked in this whole wiki section on women’s preferences is the fact that kindness is repeatedly found to be among the most desired qualities in large-scale, cross-cultural studies of mate preferences.
This is just one example. Peering into the manosphere has been like walking through a funhouse mirror version of my science. The manosphere view of evolutionary psychology is distorted, filtered, selective, and embellished…
At the end of the day, incels attempt to draw from evolutionary theory a power it does not have. Evolution is not destiny. It is a powerful tool for explaining how we came to be who we are today, but it cannot tell us who we should be today or who we can be tomorrow. In fact, we can leverage an understanding of our evolved psychology to create the world we want to live in. The manosphere interprets my science to mean that love is impossible — but a major focus of my lab is helping people form happy, enduring relationships...
If I could teach the young men flicking through passport bro videos anything about evolutionary psychology, it would be that believing evolution is important for explaining human behavior need not commit you to a regressive worldview. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling ideology, not science.

New Flash everyone: the guy who hangs out with Daniel Greene(a pro-fairy rights socialist), is loved by redditors, and got a Hugo award is… woke. Who would have ever seen that coming? But, thanks to Jon Del Arroz making a video about it on May 18th, I am here to repeat the news back to you so there is an easily accessible source as to HOW he’s woke. Everything was revealed back in January 2023, but I want people to understand the implications and narrative that he’s presenting when he says his concerns about fairy rights. By the end of this, you will realize that people calling themselves Christian does not cause them to be immune to wokeness.
In fact, with how Christianity has influenced wokeness into existence, it’s likely a lot of "Christians" are what we can call “first wave wokeness”.
For context, Brandon Sanderson is a Mormon, part of the Latter-Day Saints (LDS). Mormonism is almost exclusively a US issue, and I’ve also noticed that there are a lot of youtubers who tend to be Mormon women(probably because they have other women in the house to do the chores). These people are great with money, big in business, and their church is anti-fairy. A lot of problems the fairy-rights activists have are with Mormon churches, which is strange for Europeans to witness with how open a lot of their churches are, outside of the US. Protestant, evangelical, unitarian, the national church of Denmark, it’s a big list.
But in 2008, Brandon wrote an essay about his Mormon beliefs on how Dumbledore from Harry Potter liked to have wands stirred around in his brown cauldron. His quote:

How does this relate to Dumbledore? I'm not trying to present him as an antagonist or a villain. All I'm saying is that if you believe in the truth of your message, then you shouldn't care if someone decent, respected, and intelligent is depicted as believing differently from yourself. Decent, respected, and intelligent people can be wrong--and you can still respect them. It's okay. That doesn't threaten our points, since we (theoretically) believe that they are eternal and stronger than any argument we could make.

Back in this time, Brandon had only been an author for 3 years, but he won an award for his first published book, Elantris. He was being careful with his words, and his take is considered liberal. He was trying to defend the backlash JK Rowling received for her (poor) choice of virtue signaling and tried to mend this defense with his own religion. Mentioning his religious views is what got him canceled back then, which he later apologized for in 2011:

I cannot be deaf to the pleas of [fairy] couples who want important things, such as hospital visitation rights, shared insurance, and custody rights. At the same time, I accept and sustain the leaders of the LDS church. I believe that a prophet of God has said that widespread legislation to approve [fairy] marriage will bring pain and suffering to all involved.

He was not backing down from his religion yet. His goal post moved to the legal ramifications of the US, which are separate from his church(remember, church and state, supposed to be separate in the US), but he was still saying his religion wanted him to oppose people calling it a marriage and having it in churches. This was a second “cancellation” that didn’t go very far, mostly because he was able to use religion as an excuse for his take, with the Christian Cake Packed With Fudge Scandal not happening yet(2018).
Fast forward to 2023, after he hangs out with a bunch of woke youtubers, and we get a new quote from Brandon:

The church’s first prophet, Joseph Smith, famously taught, “I teach them correct principles and they govern themselves.” My current beliefs are where I’ve arrived on my journey, as I attempt to show the love that Jesus Christ taught. I look forward to seeing further changes in the church, and I work to make sure I am helping from within it to create a place that is welcoming of [fairy] people and ideas. I would love, for example, to see the church recognize [fairy] marriage among its members. Both temporally and eternally. I would support ordaining [tinkerbell] men to the priesthood. (And would support the ordination of women, though that is another issue.)

That’s interesting. It seems like he made a complete 180 on his stance, claims that he’s always believed this new stance, blames Jesus for this new stance, and then doubles down on this new stance by adding female ordination(becoming a priest and higher) and even Tinkerbells. As time went on, he decided that his religion was totally wrong about fairies, and this 13 year difference means way more than the nearly 200 years Mormonism has been around. I believe a fellow Mormon, Shadversity, would love to have a discussion about how any of this makes sense, but I’m starting to feel that he’s the same way. Who knows if Ethan Van Sciver understands Mormonism as well as Brandon Sanderson does, with how easy it is to manipulate prophecies and reinterpret scripture.
But that’s been the point for a while, right?
Wokeness is here to restructure both historical evidence and even religions, in order to shift cultures and social institutions to obey this progressive change. Words are changed in the dictionary, social “norms” are changed to be updated for a “modern audience”, and postmodernists like Foucault were able to trick college kids into thinking the Greeks were all pixie fairies. Once a critical theorist gets their hands on something with power, their goal is not to keep it as it is. It is to keep it for themselves. This is why you will hear these people say everything is subjective, which is secret code for “Look at me: I’m the captain of reality now.”
But wait, it gets better! Brandon Sanderson continued with:

Back in 2007, I was mostly known only in my community, not to the world at large. The essay, then, was directed at my local community, and was more controversial among them (for being too liberal) than it was controversial to the world at large for being [fairy]phobic. That might surprise you, if you’ve read the excerpts that often float around the internet. This was mostly me trying to encourage other members of the church to be more open and welcoming of [fairy] characters and ideas.
That said, the essay does display the casual bigotry common to people who (like myself) have lived lives where we haven’t had to deal with some of the issues common to the lives of people suffering discrimination. Many of the assertions (such as my view on [fairy] marriage) do not reflect my current stance. After writing it, and interacting with those who found it objectionable–even painful–I came to understand them and their experiences better. Though they did not owe me that honor, they gave it freely.

You see, he's honored to hear about the life of a bug chaser.
Brandon cares deeply about the pain he caused to his wallet… I mean the fairies who saw his essay. He was an award winning author back then, he didn’t know it would be a global thing. It was supposed to be only seen by people in Utah, that’s it. This is what we call: bullshit. The woke rely heavily on gaslighting and pretending they’re ignorant of everything, while telling others that they need to learn and understand EVERYTHING about a subject before they are even able to mention it.
He was already big on reddit, he knew all about his fandom, and he knew about his publisher, Tor. The only thing that really changed is that now he is unable to stick to being liberal and he has to present himself as progressive. Why? Well, the new Amazon deal happened recently, and he’s the writer of the series The Wheel of Time. As if Rings of Power wasn’t evidence enough of how Amazon mistreats their properties, Brandon was forced to erase his own past, like Agent J in Men in Black, burning his own hands in the process.
I’m not surprised that he’s woke or even that Christians are falling to this woke inquisition. When I said first wave wokeness, I would like to clarify why it’s the catalyst for all of this stupidity. Wokeness is not of Christian values, but instead a parasite upon Christianity, in the same way Gnosticism and Satanism would be. When Christianity started to allow new sects, and a lot of these were considered valid, the crazy sex cults of the 60s opened the floodgates for a bunch of crazy reinterpretations. It’s the same way as how there are still circles of Christianity that go for flat earth theory or say that dinosaurs don’t exist, with these people usually at the forefront of the home-schooling movement.
It’s not that home-schooling is bad by itself, it’s that bad people use it to then have the good people using it be wrongfully grouped into the same area, in the same way gun-ownership does. This type of bastardization has always been a problem in the US, due to the lack of authority over what makes something categorized as such a thing, thanks to liberalism allowing the freedom to constantly change things. As time went on, this liberalism changed into progressivism, with the key difference being that liberalism is an allowance of change while progressivism is an enforced change. The liberalism of the 1800s allowed the Confederates to claim Christianity approved of their enslavement of black people, by blaming the story of Ham and using scripture to claim it was okay to enslave certain people for generations. We always see this strange cherry-picking of scripture from fake Christians, and this problem has expanded into the Vatican itself with the current and following generations of Popes.
A lot of times, we’ll hear news about how Christians are under attack, a bakery is targeted to expose discrimination, or even where people claim they were banned from twitch for being Christian. But what they get wrong is that they are in the same circle as liberal and progressive Christianity, their openness created this weakness to tourism, and most Christian circles have been taken over in the US since before the 60s. The south has a culture of being liberal, Mormons have a culture of being liberal, protestants are very liberal, all because the US began as a liberal culture in the form of classical liberalism. The libertarian argument is always used by these liberal groups, that changes into the progressive enforcement, and over the years these liberal people get infected by the virus.
Add money to the mix, and we have ourselves an endless chain of liberal minded people falling to wokeness. The “redemption” narrative, along with original sin, from Christianity is currently its main weakness. The appeal to ignorance is another weakness, with people playing skeptic as a snake slithers through the grass. Christianity isn’t the problem by itself, it’s the naivety that comes from blind faith, which then expands into a contradictory blind faith that people are good inside, only to later wonder why everything is changing for the worse when evil people are put in charge. Fantasy stories have been under attack by the woke for quite a while, long before they tried to appropriate Tolkien with Rings of Power.
The fantasy that is controlled by the woke is an extension to their attack on religion, because to them a fantasy story is no different than a bible. Mythological presentation, symbolic themes, a dream-like world to present morals to follow; the entire thing has been used by Brandon to then have him later claim that he’s always had fairy characters since the beginning. Sure, his religion says fairies are bad, but then he virtue signals by claiming he’s always made fiction about how they’re good. He would never say this if the publishing world made sense and if publishers were the way they were in the 1950s. That is because he would never have to choose between religion and money back then, with money always mattering more to the typical materialist.
I’m sure people will say that I’m being hard on Christians, or that I’m evil for saying this, or even that I am a satanist for noticing. These people would only be angry at the truth being said, which is the opposite of what Christianity teaches. Fantasy writers, like Brandon, have a lot of supporters, with this support merging between the woke and Mormons. So many feel that they need to make sense of their fandom, so they claim their religion is wokeness, converting it into blind Satanism. This is far from the truth and we need to condemn those who focus solely on radical subjectivity.
Especially if they blame God for their stupid takes, like how Brandon does now.

The issue of aligning Theon, Asha, and Jon in time is deceptively hard, believe it or not (har!).
However, I believe I've identified enough reliable sync points to propose an alternative timeline from the unofficial timeline we all know and love. TL;DR: yes, this is a Pink Letter theory. I'm not even going to attempt to offer an alternative culprit, I just think I can disprove a few things. IN SHORT: I believe Jon dies 4 weeks before Tycho Nestoris even reaches Stannis.)
I'm open to counterarguments or being proven wrong. (EDITED to provide more searchable quotes)
Just for fun: Reek II, Wayward Bride, Jon VI, Davos IV.
For a start, let’s point out that Jon VI and Wayward Bride happen somewhere around the same time, likely somewhere in the vicinity of ~2 weeks following Reek II. We know this because Jon and Asha receive very similar wedding invitations from Ramsay that also describe the fall of Moat Cailin, and because Wayward Bride occurs on a full moon and Jon VI has a scene in bright moonlight. Sometime soon after, we get Davos VI: in the 18 days since Davos’ imprisonment, Wyman’s gotten the same wedding invitation that Asha and Jon have, and it’s also been long enough that it’s also past Wayward Bride, dated by Stannis sending a raven about taking Deepwood Motte. This lines up Moat Cailin fell during a "sickle moon," which places it ~2 weeks before the full moon in Wayward Bride, so these events happen ~2 weeks from each other. It makes sense (though is remarkable!) that Davos happens to be in prison during said events. This is just for fun, though.
What’s important is the next sync point:

The intuitive version—where George is giving us helpful hints

Jon VII, The Prince of Winterfell, and The King’s Prize.
In The King’s Prize, Stannis’ host sets out from Deepwood Motte. In Jon VII, during a new moon, Jon receives a letter informing him of this plan ("we march against him")—I believe we can sync these events as occurring roughly contemporary to one another, with Jon VII happening a few days later. For ease later on, let's say Jon VII happens ~0.5 weeks after Asha departs Deepwood.
Very shortly after that is Prince of Winterfell and Jeyne’s marriage: during this chapter, Roose receives word that Stannis has left Deepwood Motte. Allowing for just a bit more wiggle room for Arnolf to have received a similar update as Jon did, and then forwarding that information to ahead to Roose, we can place Prince of Winterfell fairly soon after Jon VII, itself after The King’s Prize begins.
Theon in Winterfell
Thanks to Asha keeping track, we know that Theon ends up at the Crofter's Village no sooner than 53 days from the time they left Deepwood Motte. (Asha notes that "On the thirty-second day" grain ran out, at least two more days pass—the day "Lord Peasebury turned against the northmen" and "The next day the king's scouts chanced upon an abandoned crofters' village" then "they had been three days from winterfell for nineteen days") (It's possible but not necessary to insert more days between 32 and the Peasebury day, and we're trying to keep this march as short as possible)
Therefore, the entirety of Theon’s Winterfell arc occurs during this time, since PoW starts right after the announcement that Stannis has begun to march and Theon I occurs ~3 days before The Sacrifice. We can actually reasonably sync these chapters, but for the most part we don’t really have to. Ghost of Winterfell begins four days prior to Theon I, so that only needs to align with Tycho's arrival.
The one interesting thing to note is the snow in The Turncloak. In The Turncloak, snow begins to fall heavily ("by nightfall snow was coming down so heavily"), and the snowstorm begins. However, also in this chapter, two scouts return to inform Roose that Stannis’ host has begun to break apart in the snow and had "slowed to a crawl". Comparing that to Asha's updates, this is at the earliest ~1 week into the march by Asha’s count, or anytime afterward ("fourth day of the march... snow began to fall" + "third day of snow, the king's host had begun to come apart"). For Asha, it's already been snowing a few days. Accounting for additional travel time back to Winterfell from wherever Stannis is, and considering that this report comes just as Winterfell is getting snow, that means Stannis’ host got the snowstorm several days before it hit Winterfell, maybe even a week earlier.
Almost like the snowstorm is following Stannis there. ;)
Asha's Days
As for Asha and Jon’s storyline—where it actually matters here—it appears remarkably easy to compare time:
I believe Asha counting the days must be an exercise with narrative importance, and it's incredibly useful: we can pin nearly to the day how much time elapsed from the beginning of Stannis’ march from Deepwood Motte until their arrival at the Crofter’s Village (no less than 34 days (cited above) and then add another 19 days at the Crofter’s Village in advance of Tycho’s arrival.
Together, the time from the beginning of The King’s Prize to the end of The Sacrifice is, at minimum, 53 days. (or, in reference to Tycho’s arrival: Stannis departs Deepwood at T -53).
TWOW Theon appears to occur just before dawn the next day, and since The Battle at the Crofter’s Village appears to begin immediately after TWOW Theon ends, we’ll say that the Battle, therefore, is 54 days following Stannis’ departure, or 7 weeks and 5 days.
Jon's Moons
Meanwhile, every subsequent Jon chapter gives us either a moon phase or an account of days past:
Jon VII occurs during a new moon ("They had no moon to guide them home, and only now and then a patch of stars.") The weather is notably clear, clear enough that it's a plot element: this is the reason for heading to the weirwood grove now. When Jon returns he get the news of Stannis’ departure from Deepwood.
(As an aside, it’s been storming the last seven days, so the latest Mance could have left is a week prior, though obviously since we’re syncing this with Prince of Winterfell, Mance likely left earlier than that)
Jon VIII occurs just before the half moon, about a week later. A moon "but half-full," to quote the text exactly. This is when Val departs to find Tormund. She says: I’ll be back on the "first night of the full moon." No one ever says she’s late, and Jon never worries about her being gone too long, so we can assume this is true—Val returns on the first night of the full moon, with Tormund, in Jon X.
Therefore, Jon IX has to happen somewhere between Jon VIII and Jon X, which gives us just over a week’s period to occur. If we’re being generous, we can say this occurred only a few days after Jon VIII, around the actual half moon.
In Jon IX, Selyse arrives and declares she intends to stay “no more than a few days,” and while this prediction is not a trustworthy source, it might give us some kind of ballpark. Jon notes the weather is clear in the morning and calls it a “respite” and thinks the snows have "moved off to the south" (to Stannis?) but by the evening, the snow is "coming down more heavily". The next day, Tycho appears to be gone, and Alys arrives.
So: Tycho appears to leave just over 1 week after Jon VII, when Jon received word that Stannis planned to march on Winterfell. This way, it makes intuitive sense that Jon sent Tycho to Deepwood Motte—barely any time has passed. It seems entirely possible that Stannis had yet to leave, or at least that Tycho could catch up with him on the march. So far, this feels entirely believable and logical.
In Jon X, Alys weds. Flint and Norrey have "hied" (hurried) to Castle Black for the Wedding, which is possible if we've said that Jon IX was ~1 week ago. The snow is still falling "heavily". Jon receives a letter confirming that eleven ships have left Eastwatch for Hardhome (likely a few days prior). Val arrives that night—our full moon, we presume.
Jon XI begins the next morning. ("that day" until "finally, as the shadows of the afternoon grew long"). There is no place to fit any time in between here and Jon IX, because this chapter includes Jon showing Val her new quarters ("I've had the top floor made ready for you"). In Jon XI, Jon notes that the snow has finally stopped after two weeks ("a fortnight"). The last time we know the weather was clear for more than a few hours (so clear it was a plot point!) was Jon VII, when Jon went to the weirwood grove. By our count of the moon, Jon VII was two weeks ago, so this lines up exactly.
Tycho
So we've said Tycho leaves in Jon IX, which is just over a week since Jon VII. If, at an estimate, we're saying Jon VII probably occurred about a half a week after Stannis actually left, Tycho departed Castle Black a week into Stannis' march. Again—he could catch up here, that makes sense.
Meanwhile, thanks to Asha, we know Tycho makes it to Stannis’ camp 7.5 weeks after their departure. If we are roughly syncing the start of The King’s Prize half a week before Jon VII, and seeing Tycho set out from Castle Black only a week later, then Tycho takes ~6 weeks to reach Stannis, and he’s not a teleporting banker at all. That’s plenty of time to reach Deepwood Motte, negotiate the exchange of hostages, travel to Winterfell in the storm, grab Theon, and then make it back to Stannis’ camp.
Jon X—Jon XIII
However, we now run into the problem of how much time has passed since Tycho left.
We said that Jon X and Jon XI (the next day) occur ~1 week after Tycho departs.
After that, Jon XII occurs exactly three days following Jon XI—there’s no space to add any extra time here. We can safely place Jon XII ~1.5 weeks following Tycho’s departure.
Jon XIII is the only remaining Jon chapter without a moon phase or a clear date. However, there are a number of events that relate to earlier events: Jon XIII begins with Jon and Selyse discussing Hardhome, seemingly for the first time, following the word of the disaster in Jon XII. Up to you how long you think Jon would have waited to discuss this—I don't think very long.
Additionally, back in Jon XII, Jon says Tormund will take men to Oakenshield in “within a day or two.” In Jon XIII, Toregg returns in the morning to announce that Tormund has settled his people at Oakenshield and is returning with 80 men in the afternoon. Tormund arrives that afternoon, bringing 50.
Soon after, the Bastard Letter arrives.
Personally, I think it’s most likely that Jon XIII occurs only a few days following Jon XII. If I’m feeling generous, I’d say we can put Jon XIII ~1 week following Jon XII, and being generous we’ll say that Jon dies ~2.5 weeks after Tycho departs Castle Black. That is, therefore, 3.5 weeks after Jon first heard word that Stannis was leaving Deepwood Motte, and (we're guessing) ~4 weeks after Stannis actually left.
By this count, Jon's dead, and Tycho Nestoris still won’t arrive at the Crofter’s Village for another ~3.5 weeks.
Next, I'm going to propose (and acknowledge) the ways that other versions of this timeline will fix this problem, though I don't like them exactly. Then, afterwards, I'm going to give a last piece of evidence why I believe in the version of events I've just described.
If you're unintersted in "what-ifs," scroll down to "The Snowstorm"

The Less Intuitive Version—where George sneaks in "The Mystery Month"

In order for us to believe Jon XIII happened after TWOW Theon, we’d need to invent a month to add in to Jon’s storyline. I call this the “Mystery Month”—is there a missing month in Jon’s storyline, or isn’t there?
I see a couple ways to make this happen.
The long wait before Jon XIII
The first, simplest way, is that we say this: Jon XIII happens a month after Jon XII. It took Jon a month to plan for and to bring up Hardhome to Selyse, Selyse has waited over month to plan her weddings with Gerrick Kingsbloods’ daughters, and Tormund has been at Oakenshield for over a month. The Letter arrives a month after the Wildlings come through, and so long as the King’s Prize also began over a week before Jon gets the Letter about it in Jon VII, we can make this work. Tycho arrives on time, we skip ahead a month before Jon XIII, and then Jon dies after the battle.
Yes, this could be how it happens, No I do not think that it's convincingly possible that Jon XIII happens a month after Jon XII.
If we don't want to try to force in a lot of time between Jon XII and Jon XIII, there are a few other ways to attempt to solve this (though these are still three timelines of entirely my own invention):
The trouble with slow ravens
Number one, across the board, it's tempting to add buffer time by imagining that Stannis left Deepwood Motte even earlier than we estimate—maybe a whole week, or even longer, before Jon hears about it in Jon VII. The main issue with this strategy is that Stannis has to send the letter, so the raven leaves at latest when Stannis does, and so now we're arguing that a raven takes over a week to fly to reach Jon .... which means that now we're also adding additional estimated time for how long it took a raven to deliver the Pink Letter, and everything has to be pushed even earlier.
That is to say: if we said it takes two weeks for word to reach Jon before Jon VII, I would say now the "battle" in the Pink Letter has to happen weeks earlier to account for raven time.
Skipping a moon before Jon VIII
We could add a month in between Jon VII and Jon VIII, where Jon VIII is not the waxing half moon following Jon VII’s new moon, but the one after that. Instead of one week, this is a ~5 week gap. The major issue with this is: we’ve lined up Jon VII roughly with the beginning of Stannis’ march, and Tycho still hasn’t arrived at Castle Black yet. If we place Jon IX right after Jon VIII again, then Tycho has ~2.5 weeks to catch up with Stannis’ host, reaching both Deepwood Motte and Winterfell along the way. This seems unbelievably fast, but that doesn’t even matter: since this doesn’t change our earlier estimate of how long Jon has left to live after Tycho’s departure (~2.5 weeks), that still means Jon dies roughly around the same time Tycho arrives. (This could be a convincing timeline if you wanted to argue that Stannis wrote the letter, give or take a few days, but there are obviously major issues...)
One obvious logical issue here is that this argument requires a scenario where Jon, who heard five weeks ago that Stannis is marching on Winterfell—which is apparently a two-week march—still sent Tycho to Deepwood Motte to catch Stannis. Why would Tycho go to Deepwood first, and not Winterfell, if Jon learned Stannis marched five weeks before Tycho left? It's true that it happened to work out, but Jon wouldn't have known, at this point, how snowed in Stannis is.
The Val takes three weeks version
Alternatively, here everything is spread out more, which is closer in spirit to what the Unofficial Timeline suggests.
We can try to give both Val and Tycho a little more time before Val's return, but we’re always trapped in a moon cycle between Jon VIII and Jon X because otherwise Val’s promise to return at the full moon doesn’t make any sense. The best way to do this is to imagine that Val leaves on a waning half moon, rather than waxing half moon. This means that Val has three weeks to travel, and that Jon VIII happens three weeks after Jon VII (and therefore ~3 weeks into King’s Prize).
(However, this is counterintuitive—it’s easier to imagine that being shown a half moon following a new moon would mean the waxing half moon. Also, I believe it goes contrary to the actual description: Jon notes the moon was “but half full,” and the “but” makes it seem like it will be half-full soon, not that it just was. But again, we can allow it. This also means that when Val looks at the half-moon and says: look for me at the first week of the full moon, she doesn’t mean next week, she means in ~3 weeks from now—after the moon has gone to new and then back to full again. Once again, this feels very counterintuitive, but it gives us more time.)
In this version of events, Tycho and Alys can still arrive as early as right after Jon VIII, and therefore that Tycho left Castle Black ~3 weeks after Jon VII. (Once again, this doesn’t make too much intuitive sense to me: why does Jon send Tycho to Deepwood Motte three weeks into a two-week march?)
This doesn’t change our count of time from Jon X—Jon XIII (a generous ~1.5 weeks) but now we’re saying say that Tycho left Castle Black three weeks prior to Jon X, so this gives us 4.5 weeks between Tycho’s departure and Jon’s death.
This solves the issue of the teleporting banker: Tycho leaves ~3 weeks into Stannis’ march and has ~4.5 weeks to make the trip, so he’s faster than Stannis but not impossibly fast. However, this still only adds a month here for the moon to align, we still have Tycho arriving roughly the same time Jon dies.
Mystery Month+
Since we're trapped into a vague schedule by Jon's noted moon cycles, the only remaining option is to assume that one of the above is true, and that Jon XIII happens at least two weeks after Jon XII. That would also make the timeline work.
However, to me, this all seems highly counterintuitive and unlikely…
And that’s before we factor in the accounts of the weather.
Yes, I have one more piece of evidence to propose, although this is a bit more debatable.

The Snowstorm

Asha sets out from Deepwood Motte, and four days later, the snows begin. By a week into the march, the host has begun to separate, and slow to a crawl.
Around this time, or a little later, the Bolton scouts see the Stannis host struggling, and turn home to report back. Several days later, accounting for vague travel time, they report this to Roose, and it begins to snow in Winterfell, too. Let's say, roughly, it begins snowing at Winterfell around ~2 weeks after Stannis departs, though possibly later.
In Jon VII (roughly where we believe the King's Prize began) the weather is clear—clear enough that Jon heads north of the Wall. If we're aligning these moments, this seems to be true for Stannis, too.
The first we hear of snows to the south in Jon IX ("moved off to the south"), and in Jon X, we hear that south of Castle Black the "kingsroad was said to be impassable" from snowstorms. In Jon XIII, Yarwyck points out that the Wall is getting snow blown against it because the "wind's from the south". All of this points to this being the storm at Winterfell.
If we go back to my original timeline, where Stannis leaves Deepwood Motte a little before Jon VII, and where Jon X occurs two weeks later…. then those reports of impassable snows to the south line up exactly with when the snows appear to have hit Winterfell, from our estimation of the sync between King’s Prize and Turncloak. If we go back to my original timeline, this is four or five weeks before Tycho Nestoris arrives. Then, a week later, in Jon XIII, when the winds from the south are only getting worse… that fits, because Asha and Theon have another three or four weeks of snow to go. And Jon is dead.

The End

But what could I possibly be saying? I don't even really know, although I will say that this feeds into my desire for the Wildlings to make a surprise appearance in TWOW.
In my proposed timeline: Tycho leaves ~1 week after Stannis does, he takes ~6 weeks to make it to the Crofter’s Village, and Jon’s already been dead for a month. So, there's been a month since.
We know from AGOT that it usually takes ~3 weeks to travel from Castle Black to Winterfell. That means that a Wildling host would have a month, or maybe a little longer, to have marched from Castle Black to Winterfell afterward, and could arrive at Winterfell right as battle begins. It could work that way. I'm not getting into any other logistics here.
On the other hand, as much work as this was, I’d love to be proven wrong here! It's all in the name of science, if by science I mean obsessive analysis of fiction. If someone has a detail I’ve missed, please let me know.

TL;DR:

Comparing Jon’s tracking of the moon, Asha’s tracking of the days, and accounts of the snowstorm around Winterfell all lead me to believe that Jon dies four weeks before Tycho Nestoris reaches the Crofter’s Village. Jon sends Tycho to Deepwood Motte one week after learning Stannis is marching, and Tycho takes six weeks to arrive, both of which are more believable than any other timeline I have seen.
Edit: thank you to AC on the discord, who has rephrased my post in a much more clear way and makes a great TL;DR: Jon 7: day 0. Jon 8: ~day 7 Jon 9: ~day 10. Tycho leaves CB. Jon 10: ~day 17 (Val’s arrival in half a month from Jon 7!). Jon 11: ~day 18. Jon 12: ~day 21. Asha King’s Prize end: day 34. Asha Sacrifice end: day 53. Jon 13: 60 or so at bare minimum. [to make the Pink Letter work]
And the point of my post is: I propose it makes more plot-related sense if we place Jon 13: ~day 30. But that would mean Jon's dead far too early for the Pink Letter to be an honest depiction of events.

To answer the commonly asked question once and for all, I have done a deepdive and summarized the findings of all relevant research I could find.
I've established a benchmark for what level of sub concussive head impacts can be tolerated and for how long without developing CTE to compare with Judo.
It's crucial to recognize that while concussive impacts are associated with clinical signs and symptoms, sub‐concussive impacts are defined as occurring below this range and do not result in clinically‐diagnosed concussions. However, studies have proposed that an accumulation of these low‐level repetitive impacts does compromise the brain over time and may result in CTE later in life. (Source 1,2,3)
CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy) is the neurodegenerative disease that may be defined by symptoms of dementia, memory loss, and emotional instability. It's famously observed in American football and other athletes of full contact sports. (Source 1)
The two measures I will quote for head impact are G force for linear acceleration and rad/s2 for rotational acceleration. Rotational acceleration is believed by many to be a primary mechanism for diffuse brain injury, which is seen in CTE. Rotational acceleration is more dangerous than linear acceleration because it creates greater tension on bridging veins and brain (Source 3, 12)
Benchmark from American football study (source 2)
In all cases, the average head impact was ~1500 rad/ s2 and 19 G. What differentiated the players without CTE from the ones with CTE wasn't the magnitude of the head impacts but rather the accumulation of these sub concussive impacts.
Players without CTE = 4500 hits over 10 years with 6.57 M rad/s2 and 87k G accumulated to the head
Players with low stage CTE = 5500 hits over 12 years with 8.32 M rad/s2 and 107k G accumulated to the head
Players with high stage CTE = 7600 hits over 15 years with 12.26 M rad/s2 and 150k G accumulated to the head
Another study suggests that 1230 rad/s2 is to be used as the lower threshold for low severity injury, but does recognise that a definitive threshold separating impacts causing injury from impacts resulting in no injury is currently not known. (Source 1)
Now that we have these benchmarks, let's look at the Judo research to understand how much impact the brain sustains from being thrown on the ground with perfect ukemi (break fall).
First study (source 4)
Performed by two judo black belts with Tori doing Osoto Gari and Uke performing ukemi (break fall) on tatami with a forehead sensor.
Second study (source 5)
14 black and brown belt practitioners with forehead sensors performing ukemi on 6 different throws. (tomoe-nage, tai-otoshi, harai-tsuri-komi-ashi, seoi-nage, deashi-braai, uchi mata), and only impacts over 16G was captured with their measurement equipment.
Results
10% of 70 Uchi mata throws resulted in an impact over 16G. These inpacts have an avg of 28 G impact on the head and 3940 rad/s2. Uchi mata had the highest incidence of sub-concussive head accelerations.
Osoto gari had linear force: between 8.7 - 11.9 G, median 10.3 G Rotational force: between 506 - 852 rad/s2, median 679 rad/s2
The other five throws in the study had a very low incidence rate of exceeding the 16G threhold, at around 1% of the throws. When they did exceed the threhold, the results were 21-28 G and 1600-2800 rad/s2
Conclusion
Given the chosen threhold of 1230 rad/s2, which has been suggested as the lower limit for diffuse brain injury. It appears that for most of the time, Judo is safe when Ukemi (break fall) is applied correctly. Uchi mata had the highest risk of exceeding the threshold and would be dangerous in about 10% of the time, despite proper Ukemi. Osoto gari is often close to the threshold at 852 rad/s2.
However, there is currently no definitive threshold for impacts causing diffuse injury to the brain. It should be noted that Judo is often on the border to dangerous when throws are executed with high power. (Source 1)
Thought experiment
Each club and practitioner's training patterns and Ukemi skill may vary, but if we were to assume that you take a hard fall (exceeding the safe threshold of 1230 rad/s2) in 10% of the larger hip throws, as shown in source 5. Then, you might sustain 3 hard falls per training. Given 3 training sessions per week, 40 weeks per year, you will accumulate 360 hard falls per year (3×3×40). This means that after 12 years of practice, you will have endured 4500 hard hits. This is the same as an American football player without CTE. But if you were to continue at this pace for an additional 3 years (total 15 years), you will have accumulated 5500 hard hits. This is the same as a player with low stage CTE. After a total of 21 years of Judo, you would then have developed high stage CTE (7600 hits).
Now, if this calculation assumes only 1 hard hit per session, the outcome would be enormously different. It would then take 45 years of Judo before you risk developing low stage CTE.
This thought experiment highlights the importance of limiting your number of hard landings per training as much as possible. Note that these hard landings occur despite proper Ukemi in blackbelts, according to the cited studies. It means that you need to be careful with the intensity of Randori you tolerate from your partner and maximize the use of crash pads during static training. It's also advisable to avoid training with larger partners (>18 kg/ 40 pounds heavier than you), if possible. (Source 4,5,6)
If you are comparing judo to other forms of martial arts it should be noted that although judo carries risks it is much lower than for example MMA sparring where the average linear acceleration in head impacts are 38 G and the average rotational acceration is 2567 rad/s2 per hit. This means that the average hit in MMA is dangerous high above the safe threshold. (Source 7)
Additional conclusions from the cited studies to help minimize risk in Judo:
Novice vs experienced judokas
It's important to also make note that novice judokas experience much higher impacts compared to blacks belts. This is due to their lower proficiency in Ukemi (break fall) Just to mention a few things, the experienced judokas have greater knee exten­sion when falling backwards and their motion is greater in the extended position when the hand contact the mat and at the end of the motion. Novice judoka tends to flex the knee more than experienced judokas. Greater knee extension during the backward fall helps to control the velocity of backward falls better. Experienced judokas roll more on the back while landing and immediately lift the hands after slapping the ground to not impede the rolling motion. The timing of the ground slap is of importance.
Novices often hit their head on the tatami mat because of their delayed response to throwing techniques and their inability to instantly contract their neck muscles to perform a backward breakfall. Therefore, to reduce the risk of head injury in judo, it is desirable to actively introduce training in which an athlete is pushed by another person and the athlete instantly performs a backward breakfall. (source 6, 9, 10, 11)
Fatigue and Ukemi effectiveness
Ukemi (break fall) effectiveness is significantly affected by fatigue following high intensity exercise. To stay safe, it's recommended to rest properly between your set of throws or Randori rounds to let your heart rate come down before engaging again. (source 8)
Expected vs. unexpected throws
Additionally, it is shown that anticipating the impact improves the effectiveness of Ukemi and helps lower the impact forces to the brain. This is why being surprised by a throw in, for example Randori, carries much higher risk than static training, especially for novice practitioners. Therefore, it is necessary to develop backward breakfall training that incorporates unexpected conditions, while considering safety (Source 3,6)
Weight difference
Higher body weight of the thrower than that of the person being thrown is a factor in the occurrence of head injuries, with the risk of head injury increasing when the thrower is ≥ 18 kg heavier than the person being thrown. These findings suggest that practice with such a weight difference between judo practitioners should be avoided (source 6)
Undermat
The use of an under-mat did not prove to be adequate in reducing head impact. Although it lowered the linear acceration of the head, it did not impact the rotational acceleration, which has more severe outcomes (source 10)
Neck strength
No correlation was found between cervical (neck), muscle strength (anterior flexion), and head rotational acceleration. Although it is important to have at least average neck strength, improving neck strength further is not the simple solution to reducing impact on the head and neck. Instead, mastering optimal Ukemi technique to be able to disperse energy more through better movement patterns is a more viable solution. (Source 6, 10)
The most dangerous judo throw (immediate danger, not in terms of long term CTE risk)
From 1983 to 2011, 118 fatalities were reported in junior high and high schools in Japan. It was pointed out that being thrown by “osoto-gari” was the major cause of fatalities (18 cases, 25%). In an experiment involving adolescents who were not judo specialists, the risk of head injury was higher when the “osoto-gari” or “ouchi-gari” throwing technique was used than when the “ippon-seoi-nage” or “tai-otoshi” throwing technique was used.
The reason for this has been suggested to be that novice judokas were likely to take a more flexed upper body posture than the experienced judokas, especially from the middle to late phase of the osoto gari break fall. The flexed posture may lead to greater velocity due to the smaller contact of the arms made to the ground in that posture. Therefore, maintaining a straight posture during the breakfall motion may lead to a reduced risk of head injuries associated with osoto-gari. (Source 6, 13)
Sources can all be found by searching the following names on google:

1. Angular Acceleration Responses of American Football, Lacrosse and Ice Hockey Helmets Subject to Low‐Energy Impacts
   
2. Leveraging football accelerometer data to quantify associations between repetitive head impacts and chronic traumatic encephalopathy in males
   
3. Rotational Head Kinematics in Football Impacts: An Injury Risk Function for Concussion
   
4. Ukemi technique prevents the elevation of head acceleration of a person thrown by the judo technique 'Osoto-gari'
   
5. Florentin, T. and Henry, S. O. (2017) "HEAD ACCELERATIONS OF SIX TYPICAL JUDO THROWS AND BREAK FALL TECHNIQUES
   
6. Effects of unexpectedness on the risk of head injuries in judo novices and experts
   
7. Concussion and the Severity of Head Impacts in Mixed Martial Arts
   
8. Influence of fatigue on head angular acceleration in judo high-intensity exercise
   
9. Biomechanics of judo backward breakfall for different throwing techniques in novice judokas
   
10. A Systematic Review on the Biomechanics of Breakfall Technique (Ukemi) in Relation to Injury in Judo within the Adult Judoka Population
    
11. Biomechanics of the judo backward breakfall: comparison between experienced and novice judokas
    
12. Biomechanical Analysis of Judo-Related Head Injuries: A Pilot Study over Ages and Experience Levels
    
13. TRUNK BIOMECHANICS DURING BREAKFALL FOR OSOTO-GARI AND ITS ASSOCIATION WITH JUDO-RELATED HEAD INJURY RISK IN NOVICE JUDOKAS