Shane Liesegang, SJ

I feel this. The kind of cult-of-personality that formed around some of the participants didn’t help either because then said condescension felt like a team sport.

it is legitimately difficult to imagine anyone making a positive case for this in literally any sense

Finally modern audiences will get to experience what Star Wars was like before they got an Englishman to dub over Alec Guinness’s New Jersey accent

a tweet from Sept. 8, 2021, quoting Gene Park's tweet "oh no. the new york culture critics have only just now learned about "games as art" discourse and are tweeting" OptimistPanda's (my) commentary is: "The year is 1997 and I’m reading basic intro “games as art” discourse. The year is 2003 and I’m reading the identical discourse from different scholars who refuse to read prior work. The year is 2015 and new scholars are having the exact same intro discourse. The year is 2021 and"

The President made these inflammatory statements. Donald Trump, speaking from the Oval Office, personally said these things that have created fear and stirred up animosity towards an entire ethnic group. What he said is deeply racist, immoral, and in direct conflict with the values of the Gospel.

I get the hesitancy to avoid specifics, but this is the time. Like the angels say throughout all of scripture: Be not afraid.

I am glad to see my bishops using their voice on this matter. They no longer have the society-scale authority (lost via attrition, squandering, and scandal) they once did, but it is still a truth that needs to be spoken.

MY POINT IS that Ambrose, at great personal risk, was willing to call out the Emperor specifically, directly, and personally. He did so in a politically savvy and pragmatic way, but fear of reprisal did not stop him from literally speaking truth to power.

(This specific, very dramatic moment in the story most likely never happened, but it did make for a popular subject of art!)

(sacramental theology has changed in the ensuing 1600 years and that particular action wouldn't be a good idea now anyway.)

"Saint Ambrose barring Theodosius from Milan Cathedral," 1619 painting by Anthonis Van Dyke

The legend is that when Theodosius refused to repent of his actions, Ambrose personally stopped him from entering the cathedral to attend mass, denying him access to the sacraments until his soul was properly disposed.

St. Ambrose, then the Bishop of Milan and recently having left the Emperor's inner circle wrote him a letter that is equal parts courtly flattery and fiery pious condemnation.

16th century engraving of "Massacre in the Hippodrome of Thessaloniki in 390"

Around the year 390, Roman soldiers, acting under orders from Emperor Theodosius, killed about 7000 men, women, and children in the hippodrome at Thessalonica. This was in response to the recent killing of a local garrison commander by a mob angry over a local policing issue.

“May We Recognize the Rich Gifts That Neighbors From Diverse Cultures Bring to Our Communities” Says Bishop Garcia In light of recent statements regarding the Somali community in the United States, Bishop Daniel E. Garcia, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bisho...

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a thing pushing back against anti-Somali rhetoric and it's pretty good BUT loses a lot of power in gesturing vaguely at "recent statements" rather than naming exactly WHO it was who made those statements. This sent me down a historical rabbit hole.

YouTube video by Nephilim Sanctuary Soundtrack Danny Elfman - Final Round [Real Steel]

also the Elfman soundtrack goes WAY harder than it needs to

I unironically love that flick

after seeing it my friends and I went to dinner and broke the story on the two sequels that would round it into a proper trilogy; still waiting on Levy's call

i would NEVER

“Our mission has always been to entertain the world,” Ted Sarandos, co-CEO of Netflix, said in a statement. “By combining Warner Bros.’ incredible library of shows and movies — from timeless classics like ‘Casablanca’ and ‘Citizen Kane’ to modern favorites like ‘Harry Potter’ and ‘Friends’ — with our culture-defining titles like ‘Stranger Things,’ ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ and ‘Squid Game,’ we’ll be able to do that even better.”

Uncommon the hour when Squid Game and Citizen Kane find joint cause beneath such mantle of commendation.

ok, my speech may be getting infected by the Spartacus revival and how its dialogue is written in a formal/inverted way [and absent most articles] to sound as if it is translated from Latin.

I had missed these over-the-top bloody warrior folk and their silliness.

so this one hit me with some Feels

historically Americans have only wanted to buy smaller cars when gas prices go way up so I guess we know what they're anticipating

Today in “Marginal income & wealth taxes are too low & this poses an existential threat to the Republic”

GitHub - jsvine/pdfplumber: Plumb a PDF for detailed information about each char, rectangle, line, et cetera — and easily extract text and tables. Plumb a PDF for detailed information about each char, rectangle, line, et cetera — and easily extract text and tables. - jsvine/pdfplumber

Currently pressing forward with pdfplumber which is a bit low-level (I have to go character by character, detecting linebreaks, etc. myself) but since this doesn't have to be generalized (I'm aiming it at a particular set of predictable documents) I can heuristic it up.

I don't particularly care what programming language it's in if it offers what I'm after in a reasonable API; I've reached the "dangit, I'll learn a whole new language then" point of frustration, which is usually just prior to cracking open the spec and writing my own which I DO NOT WANT TO DO.

Looking for: a PDF parsing library that can extract text with as much formatting info as possible. Neither PyPDF nor pdf-lib (JavaScript) have access to the *color* of text. Currently poking around pdf.js which I'm sure has it somewhere, but it focuses on rendering so the inspection API isn't great.

YouTube video by EVC RECORDS Rahzel – If Your Mother Only Knew (Interlude)

(for reference)

got to introduce two of my housemates to Rahzel doing the beat and the chorus at the same time in "If Your Mother Only Knew" and flashed to the moment of joy I had back in high school when the sophomore I was giving a ride pulled a CD out of his math textbook and said "oh man you gotta hear this"

Acceptable!

Refuse to look but I'd wager money which I don't have that the replies have a non-zero number of people engaging in this very discourse.