St jude t shirt ideas

Picked up an ST before Christmas and have really fallen in love with it. After delving deeper into the device and understanding it’s limitations, I now want to add in another piece of hardware to complement it.
I haven’t really explored new gear since the syntakt purchase so I’m open to almost anything. True polyphony would be nice, granular synthesis has piqued my interest in the past as well. A sampler could work too but I find I get lost in the sample chopping and don’t make much progress beyond that
I’m certainly not against another Elektron box but not entirely sure I’d be filling in the deficiencies of the Syntakt.
Let me know what y’all think

My baby is almost 7 months old! First summer here in New England. I wanna take him to the park, but it’s 80°F and very sunny. I’ll put sunscreen on him and a hat, but am I supposed to try to cover his skin with a long sleeved ‘beach shirt’ or should he be in like a tank top to stay cool? Wouldn’t a long sleeve make them overheat? I assume it’s okay at the beach because they can go in the water if too hot. But at the park he’s gonna be in direct sunlight for a few minutes at a time (there’s a pavilion for shade-breaks). Long sleeve or tank?

A rant about nurse practitioners..
I’m so sick of the midlevel creep. My PCP retired & I was auto assigned to someone else at the clinic. They tell me my appt is with Dr. XYZ, great! I show up, Dr. XYZ is a DNP. Absolutely not. She was borderline incompetent, clearly hadn’t even glanced at my chart before seeing me & I had to correct her several times during our appt. She introduced herself as Dr. XYZ & it took everything in me not to scream “YOU’RE NOT A FUCKING DOCTOR”. I told them when I checked out they needed to reassign me to a physician & they need to stop referring to NP’s as Dr. because this is a MEDICAL CLINIC & DOCTOR MEANS SOMETHING. I feel so bad for all the patients who have no idea they aren’t seeing a real doctor & don’t know enough to advocate for themselves.
if you have had good experiences with a DNP, i don’t want to hear ab it! good for you! mine have all been terrible and if they don’t have an MD or a DO i don’t want to see them!!!

The idea of having a human's still living organs, nervous system, and brain all transfered into a Terminator endoskeleton was such a cool idea to me. The TX was okay, but it was basically just a T-800 and T-1000 mashed together. The hybrid was different enough from the previous Terminators to stand out on it's own while still belonging in that universe. It does sound like something Skynet would have developed.
And I can totally see how such an idea would have been conceived pre-Judgement Day. Maybe it was originally a idea pitched by Cyberdyne to help those suffering from paralysis or locked-in syndrome. The next step in prosthetics. But then Judgement Day happened and the idea was used for evil.
I feel like the movie should have explored or focused on that idea more.

So i was just thinking about how to make the final season better and apart from removing the filler episodes and more time spent on Barry Allen himself i think the main villains have a big role to play as well as Red Death was pretty lacklustre and then Eddie was good but a tad rushed and wrapped up a bit quick
so i began thinking what the final villain of a season needs and i think among other things it’s a personal connection to the main heroes so I was trying to decide who it would be and i came up with someone - now this would need a large rewrite of not just the final seasons but Season 7 and Season 8 but i would propose that Kaitlyn Snow be the final villain of The Flash (well the final villain of the first 2/3 before Cobalt Blue comes in for the last arc)
now this would require that from about Season 7 (basically from when Frost and Kaitlyn split) until Season 8 finale we rewrote Kaitlyn to make some darker decision that are for the greater good and we have a kinda slow burn of Kaitlyn becoming less of the perfect and good doctor she was in the early seasons
then it comes to the motivation of Kaitlyn and I think that her motivation would be reviving Killer Frost - this is something we know she wants to do and i think this would transition her into a more villainous Dr Frankenstein role where since Kaitlyn obviously can’t match the Flash or anyone really in terms of power she would be a kinda orchastrative villain who does experiments on dead metas from throughout the series like Clyde Martin, Eobard Thawne (with the retcon that a body was left at the end of S8) or any metas that want to bring back but say they died between when we last saw them and now i think she could be experimenting with Ramsey Rosso’s blood and maybe she is keeping him captive somewhere
then i think eventually after she has perfected the ability to revive people she uses it Frost and then doesn’t turn herself in but knows that Team Flash will never forgive her so tries to leave but is caught and arrested by Barry - one thing is there would not be any kind of motivational speech that makes Kaitlyn realise she was wrong but she knew the whole time and decided that it was for the “greater good” of bringing Frost back and she would be arrested with Barry still going to visit her because they were once friends but she wouldn’t be redeemed
then i think Ramsay would escape and this would lead into the Oliver Queen episodes and also another side not is that we could still get red death but instead of batwoman it would be the body of eobard thawne and ramsey rosso blood mixed together but then after this arc we would move onto the cobalt blue story to end the series
so what do you guys think about Kaitlyn being a villain not necessarily my ideas about ow it would play out but the idea in general

Enough for a case [MI]
It’s been a long road with my ex, who gets one phone call a week with the kids and nothing else. He’s very unstable in multiple ways, and it makes him dangerous. I currently have a PPO on him but I still have to facilitate the supervised calls and somewhat communicate with him about that. Recently he sent me a long message about how he is being stalked and targeted by a gang, one gang member being someone he used to live with recently. He’s telling me that me and the kids aren’t safe because they threatened his family (us). Of course this is a big story, I have no idea how much is true, but I can’t ignore it altogether because he does stupid stuff ends up in jail/prison often and hangs around the wrong people, and I know how he pisses everyone off with how he acts. Another part of me wants to think he’s being paranoid, which he can be. Either way it doesn’t sit right with me that he could be putting us in even more danger and I’m anxious over this. Can I bring this to court and explain that he is putting us in danger by just being associated with him? I know it’s a long stretch but this could potentially be the real deal and he is the only reason we could be targeted.

I find it odd that our trusted Christian church leaders,both true blue & lipstick varieties, are quick to assert Christ’s illiteracy while attributing all sorts of magical nonsense to his name. How you gonna elevate this guy to god-tier status, yet preach he can’t read? Of course God reads, reads great!writes great too! Jesus according to Christians is the real deal, the whole Enchilda, the Beginning and the End, the Alpha & the Omega, yet also according to them he can’t write Alpha or Omega. That’s crazy thinking, blasphemy even, all the best stuff in the Bible was written by Jesus.
Receipts?
Jesus Christ (Didymus Judas Thomas) authored The Gospel of Thomas.
Read here the opening lines of The Gospel of Thomas (Leloup Translation)…
“These are the words of the Secret. They were revealed by the Living Yeshua. Didymus Judas Thomas wrote them down.”
Note the unusual use of the word “revealed” here in place of common language you’ll find of “said/spoken”.
The unusual doubling of the Twin generic descriptor, sandwiching the common Judas name.
Didymus = Twin (Greek) Judas = Name Thomas = Twin (Aramaic)
Judas, according to the Bible, was a brother & devoted servant of Jesus Christ (Mark 6:3; Matt 13:55; Jude 1). His twin (Acts of Thomas). The spiritual (divine) Christ paired to the physical (human) Judas. Jesus WAS Judas. In the Gospel of Thomas there were no miracles, no resurrections. Jesus predicted no future events, he was no prophet, no revelations or rapture. All prophesy attributed (falsely) to Jesus was culled from the Hebrew OT and retrofitted as Roman propaganda to co-opt, conflate & corrupt Judaism w/ the upstart Jesus’ movement, neatly consolidating control of both under Rome, effectively killing 2 birds with 1 stone.
So how then did Jesus know Judas would betray him? Simple, he (Jesus/Judas) turned himself in & cut a deal with Pilate to fake crucifixion avoiding further unrest in the Jewish population (exactly what you would hope for & expect from a Jesus). The deal was after the crucifix fake-out Jesus would bounce & so he did becoming St.Thomas/St.Jude traveling far & wide, converting about a billion more ppl to Christianity before dying in his 100s.
A few additional odds & ends that support this info above (greatly abridged for time).

1. NT Jude 1:1 identifying Judas as a brother to James but a “servant” of Jesus.
   
2. The apocryphal Gospel of Barnabas (apostle of Jesus), Ch. 216 - Judas takes on appearance of Jesus, later crucified in Jesus’ place.
   
3. St. Jude is often depicted wearing a a giant medallion around his neck with the life-sized head of Jesus on it, that’s 2000 yrs before modern rappers made this a thing & fashionable. They literally got Jude walking around, spreading Christ’s word “wearing the face of Jesus”. The truth hidden in plain sight.
   

Top of the morning folks! It's been awhile, I missed ya:)
Today, I want to talk about fruit.
No, not the kind that satisfies that sweet tooth, or the ones you begrudgingly snack on to lose that spare tire around your waistline (I feel your pain. Why eat apples when chocolate exists? )
I'm talking about the kind that comes from you. Specifically, what harvest your life has produced.
When you look at your life, what is there? Is it full of regret, failure, & mediocrity? Or is it vibrant, full of fufillment & purpose?
Most people when they look at their life rarely has much of one or the other, it's usually both.
Most people are skating through life, working their jobs, just living. Surviving. Existing. Most people aren't living for purpose.
I think this is because most people don't understand what purpose is. What even is that? Destiny? Were you born for a specific reason?
Meh. Probably not A specific reason, but I do have a secret that if you grab hold of it, it will change your perspective & the way you live life.
Ready?
Money is overrated. Purpose is better.
To find your purpose, look at the thing you wanted to do first. That thing inside you that your soul thirsts for, the pull inside you that wasn't/isn't "practical", but you feel fufillment in? That's it. That's your purpose.
Everyone has "gifts", "talents", "abilities", "natural" "inclinations", etc.
I call these gifts, "seeds." The reason they're called seeds, is because you're supposed to use that talent, or more appropriately, gift, to serve others with.
We all came here preloaded with software that tells us what we're here to do. Think of it like a divine/cosmic bloatware, but good.
Most of us had a career path that we wanted to do as a kid, or have this internal leaning towards things like art, music, other forms of creativity and wanting to do good in the world. Maybe you had a business idea that you just KNEW was going to be a success.
Then we grow up.
We're taught to think a certain way, do certain things, follow certain steps, and we lose our internal directory in place of society's.
Huge mistake. One that leads many people to regret and unfufullment.
Now, I don't know about y'all, but regret and unfulfillment are my two LEAST favorite things to feel next to a good shot in the family jewels, and it hurts almost as bad.
I wouldn't want that for you, so here's how you go about creating that dope, fufilling, purpose driven life:

1. Find your first love. Not romance, although that's nice too. Go back to your first dream, the real one. Figure out your gift.
   
2. Study it, practice it, implement it. This could be quick, it could be long, but either way, it's worth it. You don't have to be perfect, but you do have to be proficient.
   
3. Figure out a way to use that gift to serve as many people as possible. Find a problem, solve it with your gift.
   
4. Figure out how to diversify. Spread your seeds. Not in the gross, fun way, but in the practical and intelligent way.
   

That last point is vital.
There's a saying in the church I once heard, that went:
"Any man can count the number of seeds in a fruit, but only God can know the amount of fruit in every seed."
That's a wise way of saying: "You don't know the full potential of what's in you, until you implement it in service of others. When you plant one seed, you have no idea how much fruit it will bear."
Here's how the principle of sowing seeds goes:
Seed > tree > fruit > seeds > trees > fruits, ad infinitum.
Every seed when planted sprouts a tree, that bears fruits, that have seeds, that grow trees,...etc.
When you sow into the lives of others, particularly with your gift, you're planting trees whose fruits will not only feed you, but feed and sow into others.
Before you know it, you'll have a harvest that fed a generation, and it will make your life full.
All that to say, if you want to have a full life, become a gardener.

It’s been a long road with my ex, who gets one phone call a week with the kids and nothing else. He’s very unstable in multiple ways, and it makes him dangerous. I currently have a PPO on him but I still have to facilitate the supervised calls and somewhat communicate with him about that. Recently he sent me a long message about how he is being stalked and targeted by a gang, one gang member being someone he used to live with recently. He’s telling me that me and the kids aren’t safe because they threatened his family (us). Of course this is a big story, I have no idea how much is true, but I can’t ignore it altogether because he does stupid stuff ends up in jail/prison often and hangs around the wrong people, and I know how he pisses everyone off with how he acts. Another part of me wants to think he’s being paranoid, which he can be. Either way it doesn’t sit right with me that he could be putting us in even more danger and I’m anxious over this. Can I bring this to court and explain that he is putting us in danger by just being associated with him? I know it’s a long stretch but this could potentially be the real deal and he is the only reason we could be targeted.

So, we already discussed what DC was doing to match the tenor of the early years of the War on Terror: A grim, smarter-than-it-thinks miniseries full of gratuitous rape that was meant to take the shine off the Silver Age by showing the darker side of its greatest heroes. Marvel, on the other hand, was trying to find a way to capture the zeitgeist of a post-9/11 era of existential threats, constant government surveillance, and the idea that if you weren’t with America, you were against it. A Captain America storyline saw Cap wrestle with the very concept of Guantanamo Bay; like any story arc that involves Cap doubting whether America lives up to its ideals, this made certain conservatives pissy, to the point that bad movie cataloguer Michael Medved wrote an entire article asking if Cap was a traitor. Avengers Disassembled briefly saw the Avengers face down their demons, as the Scarlet Witch goes crazy (again) and starts killing team members, her reality manipulations causing fault lines to form among Marvel’s greatest superteam. But there hadn’t yet been a storyline that would tie the entire Marvel Universe together with the burning question, “Which side are you on?”
Yeah, it’s got nothing to do with the Sokovia Accords. We’d be a lot better off if it did.
Part 1: Mark Millar’s March to the C-Word
Content Warning: Sexual assault. None of this is germane to the topic of the drama, so feel free to skip ahead to Part 1.5 if you don’t want to deal with this. Tl;dr: Mark Millar, the writer of the event, has a near pathological need to be a 3edgy5u contrarian.
Every comics crossover is ultimately a chance for one creative in the stable to shine or falter. The editors pick a writer who has turned out dependable work and give them a chance to try to alter the status quo but good. And for Civil War, Marvel’s EiC Joe Quesada decided the best person to lead the charge was Ultimates writer Mark Millar.
But who is Millar? Well, we could say “edgelord” and leave it at that, but we’re trying to dig deeper. Millar came up in comics alongside fellow Scot Grant Morrison, long before Morrison said the only time they want to bump into Millar on the streets of Glasgow is while going at 100 miles per hour. This antipathy is alleged to have stemmed from Millar copping several ideas from Morrison that went into Superman: Red Son. But after getting a start on Superman Adventures and as a cowriter on parts of Morrison’s JLA run, Millar soon branched out to WildStorm, where he took over The Authority from departing creatowritesex pest Warren Ellis.
The reason I bring up Red Son (for those non-geeks, an alternative universe comic premised on “What if Superman’s rocket had landed in Soviet Russia?”) is to frame a constant refrain about Mark Millar. He has good high-concept ideas… which often get trammeled up in an almost Pavlovian urge to shock, disturb, and/or titillate the reader. For instance, in The Authority, Ellis had introduced Apollo and Midnighter, two close companions who just happened to share the rough power sets and demeanors of Superman and Batman, with a few tweaks. Then he revealed they were boyfriends, which was a pretty bold move for a late Nineties comic book full of widescreen action and lovingly-rendered eviscerations.
In Millar’s first arc on the title, centered on a villainous Jack Kirby clone sending out a team of baddies who totally aren’t the Avengers, Apollo is subdued and is strongly implied to have been raped by someone who’s not Captain America. Apollo gets revenge by destroying EvilCap’s spinal column with his laser vision, then leaving him to the tender mercies of Midnighter, who is strongly implied to have sodomized him with a jackhammer.
In case you can’t tell, Millar loved him some rape. And it kept showing up in his creator-owned titles as well, all of which were basically written as Hollywood pitch docs. Wanted asks the question, “What if the supervillains won and secretly ruled the world from behind the scenes?” Well, an Eminem clone would take the opportunity to step into his dead villainous dad’s shoes and commit a lot of rape (yeah, there’s a reason the movie version replaced this with basically the Euthanatos from Mage: the Ascension getting orders from a magic loom). Chosen asks the question, “What if Jesus were born today?” Well, in a blatantly obvious twist, it turns out he’s actually the Antichrist, and part of his journey into realizing his evil nature involves being raped by all the demons of Hell.
It’s not that Millar can’t write innocent or restrained; he got started on the Superman: the Animated Series comic spin-off, and some of his titles such as Huck and Starlight have been praised for being relatively wholesome (keep in mind Huck is basically “What if Superman was Forrest Gump?” when I say “relatively”). And, as mentioned above, his works are made for high-concept log lines. You might recognize some of his various pitch docs: Kick-Ass, The Secret Service (source for the Kingsman movies), and, as mentioned above, Wanted. It’s just there’s this unctuous contrarian streak to a lot of his titles, a tendency to focus on venality, grotesquerie, and sodomy, with an air of pop culture edge. This also leaked into his image outside of his writing, with comments like “Games are for pedos” and ventures like the creator-owned comics periodical CLiNT (yes, the kerning is intentional). This streak continues to this day, as The Magic Order, a title that emerged from his deal with Netflix, features a magical escapologist who, she feels it very important to tell the reader in a direct monologue, escaped her own abortion. Bottom line, Millar has a sense of vision, but it’s betrayed at times by this reflexive desire to prove he’s smarter than the reader, to rub your face in the contradictions and make you a party to the artifice of it all. Usually with a dash of rape.
But at Marvel, Millar was riding the lightning of the Ultimate Universe. His Ultimates title was drawing on the wide-screen action image of JLA and The Authority, creating the cinematic language that would come to define the MCU. The choice to fantasy cast Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury is why we have Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury. He also painted the Hulk as a cannibalistic monster, cemented Hank Pym’s reputation as a wifebeater, and gave us Captain America yelling “Surrender? Do you think this A on my head stands for France?”, so let’s just keep that in perspective.
But the Ultimate Universe was its own pocket universe. Millar was being tapped to write a story for Earth-616, the main Marvel Universe. And he had a vision:

“I opted instead for making the superhero dilemma something a little different. People thought they were dangerous, but they did not want a ban. What they wanted was superheroes paid by the federal government like cops and open to the same kind of scrutiny. It was the perfect solution and nobody, as far as I'm aware, has done this before.”

Yeah. About that.
Part 1.5: What Has Come Before
Ultimately, the crux of Civil War is something that has been explored lightly in the past at Marvel: The idea that, instead of being unlicensed vigilantes who decide the best solution of societal issues is to beat up assholes in spandex, superheroes become licensed government officers that register their true identities with Uncle Sam and solve societal issues by beating up assholes in spandex. In Marvel’s history, it hasn’t gone well. The reality of government liaisons to superhero bodies has ranged from Valerie Cooper, who worked with government mutant team X-Factor but still found herself backing the genocidal Sentinel program as a big “Yeah, but what if…?”, to Henry Peter Gyrich, an inflamed obstructionist asshole who had to be held back from flipping a switch that would depower every superhuman individual on Earth. The idea of heroes themselves bristling against a government they disagreed with had a long history, as there was a period where Steve Rogers quit being Captain America, and the government had to find a replacement while he rode around on a motorcycle in a surprisingly slutty costume. But the idea of registering with the government has usually ended up on the “No” side due to one big cohort at Marvel: Mutants.
Ever since the days of Chris Claremont, a general conceit of the Marvel Universe is that mutants are a stand-in for your minority group of choice. Hated and feared, born different and feeling alienated, painted as an existential menace and threat to the status quo. Of course, it’s long been pointed out that the metaphor breaks down on the general grounds that, say, gays can’t shoot laser beams out of their eyes. I have my thoughts on that which I might share in the comments if someone pokes me hard enough, but it’s been general editorial consensus that people with powers, especially those of persecuted minorities, being compelled to share their true names, addresses, and natures with the federal government is a “That train’s never late!” move. Not only that, it’s a slippery slope. The classic X-Men story “Days of Future Past” is entirely premised on the idea that a government program of genocidal robots built to wipe out mutants will eventually run out of mutants… and then start turning on humans who could give birth to mutants, and then it’s Skynet all over again.
Another running meme in the Marvel Universe is that the X-Men usually exist in a Schrodinger’s cat situation with the rest of the superhero universe, both coexisting and in their own worlds. Yes, mutants have served on the Avengers, and yes, Thor intervened when the Morlocks were nearly wiped out in the sewers under New York. But Captain America, for all his proud statements of living up to America’s ideals, has a habit of missing the plot whenever the US government (or Canada, seat of all the Marvel Universe’s governmental evils - no, really) decides it’s Genocide O’Clock. And when the mutant nation of Genosha was completely wiped out by said murder robots, the Avengers seemed to be all “New phone who dis?” But when the two do intersect, there’s usually support for the mutants. One story in Fantastic Four had Reed Richards - Mr. Fantastic, stretchy man, greatest genius in the Marvel Universe, guy who’s probably being cucked by a fish-man - get tapped by the US government to make a device that detects mutants and other people with powers. He does… and then uses it to show why the government probably doesn’t want it, as it pings several members of Congress as having just enough genetic variation to qualify as “mutants,” even if they don’t have powers.
All in all, while the argument has some merit, for years, Marvel has come down on the position that asking people with powers to reveal their identities to the federal government is something that could go really bad if somebody with a hate-on for superheroes ends up in power. Something that would never happen oh yeah it totally did. But before it all went to Hell, Civil War at least gave an opportunity to reexamine the concept and see if it had merit.
It might have. But not with this argument.
Part 1.75: What Else Has Happened Before?
And now, some things that will ultimately give context for what happens next:

• In the pages of Thor, all of Asgard eventually runs headlong into Ragnarok. Thor and the rest of the Asgardians give their lives to save the earth, taking Thor off the board… for now.
• As mentioned above, the Avengers experience a critical fault due to Wanda going batshit (a common lament). With Avengers Mansion destroyed and the team at odds, it is eventually reunited under Tony Stark, who put the Avengers up in a tower he built.
• Nick Fury has vanished due to doing some skullduggery in the pages of the miniseries Secret War (no, not Secret Wars**, this is different). Acting head of SHIELD, the all-purpose super spy squad of Marvel, is Maria Hill, who can’t seem to draw her pistol without shooting herself in the foot.
• Due to Wanda continuing to go batshit, the House of M crossover event ends with her casting a spell: “No more mutants.” While the damage is staunched, Earth-616’s population of mutants (which was recently established to be somewhere around 16 million, meaning they outnumber Native Americans or the Romani) is reduced to 200, the rest being depowered or dying as a result of being depowered. This was because, as Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada said, the idea of mutants being everywhere made them “boring.” The fact that mutants were starting to be written less as a minority stand-in and more as an actual minority group with fashion, culture, music, and neighborhoods might have had something to do with that. From the wake of this event emerges Sally Floyd, a journalist whose own mutant daughter died before the mass depowering due to having a power that was more curse than blessing. The series Generation M follows her as the viewpoint character as she investigates the stories of former mutants.

Part 2: Connecticut Can’t Catch a Break
The big kick-off for Civil War involves the New Warriors, a team of teen heroes who have, as of a recently canceled series, been trying to make it big as reality TV stars. They get in a fight with a bunch of villains in the small town of Stamford, CT, when exploding villain Nitro goes positively nuclear, resulting in a blast much bigger than any he’s generated. [1] Not only does this mostly wipe out the New Warriors (save for kinetic energy-absorbing goofball Speedball), but it also happens to hit a nearby school. In the end, 612 people are dead, many of them children, and the nation wants answers.
With public opinion turning against the New Warriors, former member Hindsight starts leaking secret identities to get the heat off his back. This only makes things worse. Secret identities have only recently stopped being a thing for some heroes: Captain America only came out a few years ago, it was only recently that Tony Stark stopped pretending Iron Man was his bodyguard, and Daredevil was almost outed in the pages of his book. But something needs to be done, so Tony helps work with Congress to pass the Super Human Registration Act, which requires that all people with powers or working as vigilantes register their identities with the government to receive training and oversight. If you don’t? Believe it or not, jail, right away.
Fault lines quickly develop in the superhero community. While Tony is leading the “pro” side, alongside Reed Richards (yeah, we’ll get to that), Captain America, usually painted as the embodiment of the dream of America despite its compromised history and many sins, is against it. He’s lived through Richard Nixon being a secret fascist and shooting himself in the head after being fingered as mastermind of a vast criminal conspiracy ([yes, that happened](SE02.jpg) ); he knows how badly this could go in the wrong hands. Needless to say, Maria Hill and SHIELD hear his concerns, understand his problems with it, and are willing to iron out the kinks through reasoned debate.
Just kidding. Before the law has even been signed, Maria sics SHIELD’s elite Cape-Killers squad on Cap with the intent of getting him behind bars. Cap swiftly goes underground and starts his own group of anti-registration superheroes.
The fight continues for the next few issues. Spider-Man, caught in the middle, reveals himself to be Peter Parker at a press conference, declaring his support for the SHRA. Doctor Strange is so powerful that he tells the government to fuck off, and somehow, Maria Hill doesn’t decide to go charging up his asshole. Ben Grimm, the ever-loving blue-eyed Thing, is so sick of all the conflict he goes to France. But things are still at a stalemate, and while SHIELD may be acting like a bunch of merry assholes, it seems like there’s a debate to be had that could still be resolved reasonably… except for one key factor.
Part 3: I Fought the Law, and the Law… Huh?
No one ever really defined what the Super Human Registration Act, the legislation that tore the Marvel Universe’s superhero community asunder, did. Every book that had an issue that touched on the event seemed to have a different understanding of its principles, as well as just how fascist it might be in the long run. In the pages of She-Hulk, attorney Jennifer Walters/She-Hulk argues the law is a net good, as it gives heroes the backing and resources they need to not have to go it alone, while also having some measure of government oversight. In the pages of Civil War Frontline (oh, and we’ll get back to Civil War Frontline, don’t you worry), Wonder Man is told by the government that he needs to do a job for them, and if he refuses, well, one thousand years dungeon.
Which then leads into the other issue behind the SHRA. Namely, that everyone in favor was either starting to swing towards fascism or embracing bootlicking as a lifestyle, not a kink. In the pages of Amazing Spider-Man, Peter asks Reed Richards, who has always bucked authority and once stopped the US government from doing something just like this with mutants, why he’s pro-registration. Reed then reveals that an uncle who has never been mentioned before was called before HUAC; he refused to name names, his career was ruined, and he killed himself. From this, Reed - the man who stole a rocketship because the government said “no” to his planned space voyage - has learned that the government is always right, especially when they could step on your neck (this was received so badly that a later comic revealed he’d actually borrowed the concept of psychohistory from Asimov’s Foundation, he’d made it work somehow, and his calculations showed that this was the only way to avoid a greater disaster). This comic also revealed that people who were in violation of the SHRA were sent to a literal extradimensional Gitmo, a prison in the Negative Zone that later comics would reveal was overseen by… Captain Marvel. No, not that one. No, not that one. The Kree superhero Captain Mar-Vell, who had famously died of cancer decades before. How did he come back from the dead? Fuck if we know.
This “the law says what you want it to say” approach spread across various books and miniseries meant to cross over into the event. In the pages of a crossover mini between the Runaways and the Young Avengers, this meant SHIELD Cape-Killer squads were using lethal force against teenagers. The second-to-last issue of the mini ends with several members of both teams in extradimensional Gitmo, about to be dissected by a guy who’s horny for torture. The fact that all the captive heroes were the queer members of both teams? Total coincidence. Honestly.
So, it quickly becomes clear that the editorial control on this event is less than cohesive. There are different ideas all over as to what the SHRA does, and some of those ideas are tacking pretty fashy. But if the law is being painted as that bad, then clearly, there must be some greater statement of freedom vs. security. Maybe Millar’s really painting a subversive picture of what happens when you trade liberty for control, right?
Part 4: Why Do You Hate the Good Thing?
After the publication of Civil War #3, Millar would say in an interview he was actually pro-registration. I can’t find that interview, but here’s a similar sentiment shared years later:

“Weirdly, some of the other writers would often make Tony the bad guy, which I thought was a strange choice because I was actually on Tony’s side... In the real world, if somebody had superpowers, I’d like them to be registered in the same way that somebody who has a gun has to carry a license. But a gun can kill several people while a superhero can kill several thousands of people, so on a pragmatic level I’m 100% on Tony’s side. Maybe on a romantic level, Cap’s position makes sense but I don’t think anybody in the real world would really want that."”

And again, here’s the thing: He’s not entirely wrong. As said above, the idea of civil liberties for all and “free to me you and me” falls down a little when one of your neighbors can blow up a city block by thinking real hard. But Millar is fighting against years of ideological inertia in the Marvel Universe, as well as painting Captain America, the guy who has always embodied the ideal of a righteous, just America, as in the wrong. He needs to make one hell of an argument.
So here’s what happens in the pages of Civil War #3 to sell the audience on the SHRA:

• Thor comes back from the dead… and he’s on Tony’s side! Well, not really. Tony and Reed both realized that having one of the most beloved gods of the Marvel Universe come out on their side would be a big win… if only he wasn’t dead. So, they cloned him. Or rather, they T-800’d him, putting cloned divine flesh on a robot skeleton. But I’m sure he’s perfectly under control, and - oh, he just killed Goliath. In the next issue, one of Marvel’s black male heroes, frozen at the size of a small townhouse in death, will be buried in a gigantic ditch, wrapped in a tarp and chains. You’d think Hank Pym could grow a large enough coffin, at least.
• With Cap and the anti-registration side escaping once again, Tony decides he needs a dedicated team that can track down fugitive superhumans. To do so, he creates a new version of the Thunderbolts, a concept long associated with “villains acting like heroes.” And who does he put on this team? Venom, the Spider-Man villain who eats people’s brains; Bullseye, the Daredevil villain who will kill anyone for the lulz; and Norman Osborn, a.k.a. The Green Goblin, who famously murdered Spider-Man’s girlfriend Gwen Stacy.

Again. Tony’s in the right. The SHRA is good.
Part 5: Yadda, Yadda, Yadda
The next few issues of Civil War might best be described as “They fight, and fight, and fight and fight and fight.” The anti-registration side picks up The Punisher, Marvel’s most avowed murderer of criminals - and Cap is somewhat shocked but not entirely surprised when two minor villains join the anti-registration side and Frank promptly kills them on sight. Spider-Man starts realizing things are weird on the pro-reg side and defects, after he has set his entire life on fire. The X-Men have continued to stay out of this whole mess. In the lead-up, Emma Frost called Tony out on the Avengers’ complete absence when Genosha got nuked. Later, Carol Danvers (then Ms. Marvel, now Captain Marvel) will show up at the Xavier School to pitch the SHRA just after a massive terrorist attack kills dozens of students. Emma responds by telepathically dogwalking her.
By the final issue of the miniseries, the SHRA has expanded out into the Fifty States Initiative, wherein each state gets its own superteam. There’s a big final battle, Hercules kills Robo-Thor, and Cap nearly takes out Tony, only to be stopped by… the heroes of 9/11. No shit, Captain America is subdued by cops, firefighters, and paramedics. And when that happens, Cap finally takes a look around, realizes their big ideological street brawl has resulted in collateral damage, and surrenders. The SHRA wins, though Tony feels a little bad about it. Cap is ready to stand trial and to argue that, while he may have done something wrong, he did it for the right reasons.
Once again: Yeah. About that.
Part 6: MySpace Tom Didn’t Die For This
Running alongside Civil War is Civil War Frontline, a street-level book written by Paul Jenkins that managed to capture this world-breaking conflict through the eyes of people on the street. Though it has side stories, its main leads are Ben Urich, Peter Parker’s journalist buddy at The Daily Bugle, and the aforementioned Sally Floyd. Throughout the series, they start to realize there’s a story underneath the SHRA, as if somebody is playing the angles.
Before we talk about that conclusion, let’s talk about a side story. Remember how we said part of the comics community saw Identity Crisis as a driven effort to make things less “wacky” and intentionally darken the DCU? Well, that same tonal approach led to one of the more laughable moments of a pretty laughable arc. See, despite the fact that, as established, it was Nitro who blew up Stamford, it’s Speedball, the only survivor of the New Warriors, that views himself as responsible and is held up as a scapegoat by the general public. In addition, the blast screwed up his powers. Now, he doesn’t absorb and reflect kinetic energy; rather, he generates energy based on pain. So, he builds himself a new, extreme outfit lined with 612 spikes, one for each person who died in Stamford. This will drive his crusade to make things right - not as Speedball… but as Penance.
It was so laughably DeviantArt “OC do not steal” that no one could take it seriously. Look what you did, you took a perfectly good goofball and gave him an emo streak. The turn is swiftly mocked in other Marvel books, and it’s eventually revealed that Speedball still had his original powerset and always intended to put Nitro in the Goofy Suit of Dark Inner Torment as punishment for his crimes. But this turn gives you a sense of the tone and heft Jenkins was bringing to the proceedings.
Anyway, back to the main plot. Ben and Sally follow the thread as Namor, as he is wont to do, declares war on the surface world after an Atlantean diplomat is shot. But it turns out the assassination was arranged by Norman Osborn, who decided it was better to beg forgiveness than ask permission and manipulated Atlantis into war so that Tony could have another piece of evidence for getting superhumans on a leash. And the two journalists deduce that, on some level, Tony had to know this would be an inevitable outcome of giving state backing to an unhinged mogul who dresses like a Power Rangers villain. Weighing what to do with this information, Ben and Sally, who are kind of sick of the collateral damage by this point, sit on it while they go in for an interview with Captain America, now in custody and willing to tell his side of the story.
And then. And then. The monologue. If you want a lesson in how to assassinate a character in 30 seconds or less, this monologue is a great example. Sally Floyd calls Captain America out as completely divorced from American values. Now, again, Captain America has long served as the beating liberal heart of the Marvel Universe. He has always represented an America that reckons with its legacy of things like internment camps, Manifest Destiny, and Jim Crow, in order to transcend these scars and embody the promise offered by Emma Lazarus’s New Colossus, carved on the side of the Statue of Liberty. Why is he out of touch with Americans at the dawn of the 21st century?
Well, he’s never heard of MySpace. [2] He doesn’t watch NASCAR. He doesn’t follow American Idol. There are pop culture moments that have aged like milk; this one had all the permanence of an ice cream cone in a blast furnace. But despite the inanity of Floyd’s argument - and trust me, there are fan edits dedicated to Cap pointing out how full of shit this argument is - it’s clear it represents something else. This is a post-9/11 world. Fuck civil liberties, we have a no-fly list and Gitmo, and if the American people really cared, they’d do something other than watch Simon Cowell read aspiring singers to filth. What does Captain America stand for in this moment of crisis?
Nothing. Because he just looks away from Sally Floyd. No doubt thinking, “Oh my God this bitch.” But to underline the argument in question, Sally storms out of the interview, Ben in tow. She still has that information on Norman Osborn’s false flag operation… and while she and Ben confront Tony on everything that went down, they decide the story should never see the light of day. Because they wouldn’t dare jeopardize the SHRA, because security is more important than the truth.
Oh. And then Cap gets shot. And dies. He totally dies (except he doesn’t but we’ll get to that). If ever there was an unintentional thesis statement for this event, running in the late stages of the Bush era, it would be this: “It’s better to trust that the powers that be who oversee the new America will keep you safe, even when they stage false flag operations, stick you in a gulag, and put their trust in monsters. All that civil liberty stuff was the old America. And the old America was hopeless. It wasn’t even on MySpace.”
Epilogue: Consequences Keep Consequencing
As you can tell from that last paragraph, a lot of the fan reception to Civil War likely had a lot to do with the period. This was the Bush era, a time where you were for America or against it. We were in the shadow of the Patriot Act, Gitmo, and widespread wiretaps, paranoid about what civil liberty we’d be asked to put on the pyre next in the name of Freedom. A story all about the warm, clenching fist of government control that tells you to ignore the collateral damage… well, it wasn’t great for the cultural moment.
The ideas of Civil War aren’t necessarily bad ones. I frame Cap as the liberal dream of what America could be, but there are good arguments to be made that America has never been that and Cap is just copium for liberals. His most recent title, Sentinel of Liberty, opens with Steve saying he is out of touch with the average American - not because he doesn’t watch NASCAR, but because he’s a WWII veteran who looks maybe 30 years old at most and whose best friends are all superheroes or spies. A narrative that has him on the wrong side of the issue and detonates his beliefs isn’t impossible, but it probably shouldn’t be one where people who got powers due to a fluke of birth or a radiation accident are told by the government, “Join with us or we’ll send supervillains after you.” Hell, as the Civil War movie proves, there is a way to tell a story about a superhero community torn in half by the idea of mandatory registration as government-controlled actors, and just why people would think that could be a bad idea (“Hey, remember when a good chunk of our intelligence apparatus turned out to be Nazi stay behinds?”).
But in the context of the era, and coupled with the execution, Civil War felt like a hard sell, and you could feel the thumb pressing on the scale every second while reading it. The moral center of the Marvel Universe is wrong, the winning side employs sadistic murderers and has an extradimensional Gitmo, and the writer is telling you that any sane individual would be on Team Green Goblin Employer.
So how did that all work out? Well…

• With Cap seemingly dead, shot by his brainwashed love interest Sharon Carter as part of a plot by the Red Skull, Bucky Barnes/the Winter Soldier becomes the new Cap. Only it turns out Steve wasn’t killed, but shot with a time bullet that Billy Pilgrims his ass. He eventually comes back.
• Thor comes back, finds out what Tony did, and beats his ass all the way across post-Katrina New Orleans.
• The Secret Invasion event happens next, which leads to Skrull infiltrators hitting everything (this is also the explanation for Captain Mar-Vell’s miraculous resurrection: He was a Skrull all along). With Tony caught with his pants down and Norman Osborn seeming to save the day, Norman - who has been losing his shit for some time - takes over the Initiative and forms his own fascist cabal, HAMMER. To try and stop Norman from learning everything on every hero ever, Tony goes on the run and actually starts deleting his own brain, which he then reassembles with a backup from before anyone even thought of the SHRA. The fact that getting rid of Tony’s “Oops I did a fascism” period came out alongside Iron Man hitting theaters is a coincidence, I’m sure.

As for Spider-Man? It might not shock you, but having a hero without the resources of Tony Stark out himself to the world carries liabilities. An assassin who tries to kill Peter instead hits Aunt May, and it appears she’ll die of her injuries. All this leads to One More Day… and if you thought the fans hated Civil War? Oh, BABY.
[1] This is eventually explored in the pages of Wolverine, of all books, as Wolverine decides maybe somebody should track down the person who actually killed hundreds of children. It’s revealed that Nitro was given power-boosting drugs by the CEO of Damage Control, Marvel’s designated “clean up after the super-battle” corporation, as a way of generating business. In a sign of how little this matters, Wolverine tells Maria Hill to her face that the person responsible for a mass casualty event is the pawn of a powerful conspiracy, and she basically says, “Not my problem.” Cobie Smulders must thank the gods that her Maria Hill is written as somebody with basic human decency.
[2] Hilariously, when Sally Floyd was brought back during Nick Spencer’s Captain America run because no one had piled enough dung on her corpse, this line was retconned to her asking him about Twitter. Given everything Elon’s been doing lately, we’ll see if that ages just as poorly.

So my boyfriend (24m) and I (22f) are going to be taking in his little sister (11f) over the summer. Their home life is not good at all, and now that she’s 11 she’s starting to become aware of it. Aside from emotional trauma we know she’s been having, this on top of teen hormones has made her start to have a hard time regulating any emotions, to the point we’ve had to restrain her from hurting herself. I’m looking for help from foster parents who have taken in kids from troubled homes to give me any idea on how to help her and make her feel welcome and loved. I would love to take her to therapy, but unfortunately we were lucky enough to be able to just get her over the summer, because anytime her mom sees someone trying to help her kids, she cuts off all contact and keeps the kids away. And yes, CPS has been involved for years but hasn’t done anything to help.

hello people, I would like to do a save which I would consider my ‘final’ save of the year and I don’t know who to do. Ideas from you guys would help a lot. A team preferably in the top 5 leagues or Holland would do perfectly, championship also.

In early Christianity, proto-Orthodox beliefs (the ideas that would become mainstream Christianity) competed against groups like Ebionites and Marcionites, and won out.
I’ve heard Christians say that we can take mainstream Christianity to be the right path because God steered the Church towards proto-Orthodox beliefs and away from alternatives.
Certainly many Christians believe this to be the case with regard to the Bible — if the Marcionites had won, the canon would look very different. Thus, if God was steering Christianity to ensure the right letters and stories wound up in the Bible, he must have been steering proto-Orthodox beliefs towards victory.
If you don’t agree with that, I’d certainly be interested to hear about it.
But my question is more for those who do agree.
Is God still steering Christianity towards correct beliefs today?
For example — there are 1.3 billion Catholics in the world today, far more than any one Protestant group or the Eastern Orthodox Church.
Could this be evidence that the Catholics are correct?
If not, when did God stop actively “steering the ship” to make sure the correct Christians were in the majority?
Thank you in advance for your answers!

Looking for potential insight to help my mom out. She’s been a T1 forever and in the last couple years began using the Libre freestyle CGM sensors and noticed a massive improvement. It’s pretty well essential for her at this point and helps her realize she’s going low before she can even feel it. The idea of going back to test strips when she’s been managing so well with this makes her cry and let’s be real, who doesn’t use monitors or a pump in this day and age.
The problem is she is 60 and just recently retired. This isn’t to say my parents are well off but because she quite literally had to or the stress of her job was going to give her a stroke (again). While working her sensors we mostly covered by her group insurance policy. Manulife of course offered her a private insurance continuance that she would need to pay $250 a month for. It’s that or find your own, which at 60 with a pre-existing condition is not exactly easy.
She did the math and the additional services like regular dental, physio and vision made it worth while and she accepted it. After accepting they informed her that any sort of CGM device and accessories would not be covered in her whayever annual $ prescription coverage, taking this new monthly payment of $250 for medical that she never had into $480 once she pays the $230 at SDM for two sensors plus dispensing fees. Not to mention the instances where the sensor dies well before the end of the 14 weeks.
She’s now obviously very upset because that was not an anticipated monthly expense and is talking about looking for a part time job, however she’s just coming off of getting her cataracts done and was recently told she will need surgery in her hands for arthritis (good old desk jobs!) and literally cannot work at the moment.
She did get the disability tax credit however her goal with the refund (about $1,100) from that was to be used to help subsidize the medical plan With gas at $1.60/L, groceries costing an arm and a leg, and now just simply existing adding on hundreds monthly, she’s understandably stressed right out.
So Canadian T1D redditors, are there any plans you know of that will cover those or any additional credits/programs/subsidies that may be able to relieve some of this financial burden?

The episode on Gargwiki.
The episode on Ask Greg.
How long has it been: it's the same night as the previous episode, but midnight has passed.
We begin with Owen telling Elisa that "one of the newly installed generators in the Castle exploded"; Elisa doesn't buy it, claiming she "heard automatic weapons firing up there": that sounds like a big fat lie to me - can you really hear them from that distance? - but I admit I'm not an expert. She then meets Xanatos, who states that the exploding generator thing was "for the press. The truth is that my men repelled an invasion by a rival corporation trying to steal some of our new technology": kinda weird that he cleary admits that he's going to lie to the press and Elisa - a cop - says nothing about it.
...
Oh, who am I kidding? It's the most realistic part of the episode; moving on.
The next scene serves as a reminder that "Oh yeah, this was a kids' show, right?": the Trio having shenanigans in the kitchen; can't say I like it (I'm pretty sure I never liked it, even when I was a kid myself) and it really doesn't fit with the notion that, from the point of view of the Gargs, the Wyvern Massacre happened more or less three hours ago - you'd think they'd be a bit too busy dealing with overwhelming grief to care about exploring a modern kitchen.
Elisa sees Hudson from afar; Owen tries to cover it up with the standard "Yes, it happens that you see what's not there in a spooky place like this" excuse - but he says it with such a convincing tone that for a moment you kinda believe him. At this point Elisa decides that:

1. She's unsatisfied.
2. Warrants are for other people.

She starts investigating - and, when she hears someone getting closer to her, she's awfully quick at pulling out her gun, considering that she has no legal right to be there. Anyway: she meets Bronx, she meets Goliath, she loses a gun, she falls, Goliath saves her; better get used to the latter three, Sugar.
Goliath and Elisa's first conversation is... ok: nothing awful, nothing transcendental; I do like this exchange:
ELISA: "Your kind? You mean there's more than one of you?"
GOLIATH: "...barely."
GOLIATH'S MIND: You filthy traitorous c*nt from a race of filthy traitorous bastards."
It's clarified that Gargoyles can't fly, just "glide on currents of wind": can't say I remember this particular rule ever being broken, which, kudos; it may have happened at some point, but it certainly didn't happen often.
Another line I like: "Now, once again: what are you doing here? And please: don't fall off the building this time." Two seconds later, Elisa says: "So a thousand years ago you were betrayed by the one human you trusted..."; hey, what happened to "never trusting humans again", Goliath? You already told this one the story of your life!
Elisa meets the rest of the Clan; Brooklyn sniffs her, which I don't get - she's hardly the first human he met, after all; Goliath agrees to meet her again because we need to get the series started "If we're to defend the Castle, I suppose we need to be prepared for whatever's out there." We get this exchange:
ELISA: "A good detective trusts no one."
GOLIATH: "That's one thing we have in common."
Considering how quickly they become best friends, I don't find this convincing at all, but whatever. Elisa leaves, and Xanatos explains to Goliath that he needs him and his friends to recover "his" stolen disks from, and I quote: "a research center on a small island in the bay, a heavily fortified base deep beneath the city and a huge air fortress that flies in a holding pattern over the city. [...] It seems an absurd amout of protection, I know, but this is an action show rest assured, the information is that important." We then get our first glimpse of Demona in the present day; Greg Weisman doesn't like it, and neither do I, for pretty much the same reason: "At the end of Act Two, the door slides open revealing Demona in silhouette, clearly plotting something with Xanatos. That always really bugged me. I didn't want to give away that she was alive in this episode. I didn't want to know who Xanatos was talking to."
Next night, the Trio decides to go exploring; their reasoning makes sense ("After all, we can't spend the rest of our lives in the Castle."), but considering that the Massacre happened literally yesterday from the Clan's POV, you'd think Goliath would be a bit more wary of the idea: they really should have gone out together the first few nights, but oh well - guess we needed to have more shenanigans.
Goliath and Hudson go to Elisa, and we learn why Gargoyles don't use names: "Must you humans name everything? Nothing's real to you till you've named it, given it limits!". I won't deny that, for a fairly long amount of time, I believed this to be the deepest s**t ever, but nowadays I've got to ask: what the f**k does it even mean? How does naming something give it limits? You might as well argue that it makes it smell funny. Then we get another gem:
HUDSON: "Does the sky need a name? Does the river?"
ELISA: "The river is called the Hudson."
HUDSON:
...uh, Hudson? Us humans have been giving names to places long before the tenth century - I'm not exactly sure how you missed that; you're from Castle Wyvern, remember? Moreover, the fact that he then immediately agrees to call himself "Hudson" kinda goes to show that he doesn't believe overmuch in this bulls**t tradition himself. Then Goliath takes Elisa into his Big Strong Arms, and they look at each other in a way that makes me think "Gargoyles mate for life my ass." Hudson leaves, presumably because he doesn't want to see two longstanding traditions die out on the same night.
Goliath and Elisa's first flight through the city is... ok: nothing awful, nothing transcendental - and honestly, that's more or less my opinion about the rest of the episode; we get some more shenanigans, Brendan and Margot debut, the Street Thugs debut, Vinnie (kinda) debuts, and then there's the cliffhanger. The only notable thing are a couple of exceptionally pat lines from Elisa:
"You know, Goliath? You may be the best thing that happened to this city in a long time."
"Sure, the city shows an ugly face sometimes, but there's more to it than that: there's beauty here... moms that sing to their kids, the way my mom used to."
Yeesh. Final verdict: ok, but the first two episodes were better.
RANKINGS (which look a lot like the episode list at this point):

1. Awakening Part One
2. Awakening Part Two
3. Awakening Part Three

My husband has BPD and has threatened divorce several times when he doesn’t get his way. He usually gets very angry, yelling, screaming, throwing things.
Several months ago he put me through hell by going off his meds and developing a habit with psychedelics. He went nuts. Nothing he said made sense and everything that came out of his mouth was cruel, more so than usual.
He promised to put that stuff behind him and move forward with me. We have been wanting to have kids for some time, but I always said it wasn’t a good idea until he got more stable.
2 months later I find out he’s been taking them again behind my back and is straight up asking me if it’s ok to have a party and do them over here. This time I’m not going to let him rationalize his way into doing whatever the hell he wants. I told him he hurt be badly this last year when he went off the deep end with it and his personality changed and I was hurt again when I could put he’s been putting the drugs before me and his life again.
The difference is now he is cool, he is not blowing up, he’s ok with us not working out so he can do this.
I have tried to be so perfect for him but I can’t be good enough.