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megpie71

January 2025

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Friday, July 25th, 2025 05:19 pm

Posted by fromtheheartofeurope

Second paragraph of third chapter:

In 1513, Luther decided that his main lectures in the coming year would deal with the Psalms. There was nothing untoward in this. The book of Psalms was generally considered by Christian theologians the most obviously “Christological” book in the Old Testament, and was therefore a favored subject for commentary throughout the Middle Ages. Notwithstanding Luther’s insinuation that the Bible was unknown to professional theologians, lecturing on a part of the Bible (especially this part) was not at all unusual. The academic pursuit of theology from the thirteenth century onwards had been based on one particular textbook, the Sentences of Peter Lombard, on which dozens, if not hundreds, of medieval commentaries and lecture series survive. But this textbook was the starting point for the study of theology, not its be-all and end-all. Scholars lectured on the Sentences, as Luther had done, by way of apprenticeship, to prove themselves as theologians, and theology students started by attending lectures on the Sentences, but the Bible was by no means ignored.

I got this for Anne a few years back, as it’s closer to her interests than mine; but I also vaguely knew Richard Rex and his wife Bettina from Fisher House, the Catholic Chaplaincy in Cambridge University, at the very start of his career, so I was interested to see what has become of him.

And it’s quite a good book. The intellectual context needs a lot of unpacking for the reader unfamiliar with sixteenth-century Christian theology, but Rex takes us through Luther’s thought processes about what Luther was thinking, saying and teaching, as well as guessing at his (much-explored) psychological impulse to resist authority. I’d have liked maybe a little more on the micropolitics of the German statelets which created a context where (some) governments were more receptive to religious innovation than might have been the case in earlier centuries.

Rex does enlarge at length on the technological revolution of printing, which made the spread of new ideas possible, and which left the ecclesiastical authorities reeling. I must say I found strong similarities to the rise of social media today, and the ability of new political forces to seize the momentum and disrupt existing authority. There is a vivid description of Worms during the Reichstag meeting, festooned with posters of Luther and with the Elector Frederick ready to print off the pro-Luther side of the story for mass consumption as soon as it happened. Meanwhile the Pope had no idea what was happening.

Not a book for beginners, but certainly OK for my level of prior knowledge (better than the bio of Calvin that I read in 2022). You can get The Making of Martin Luther here.

This was the non-fiction book that had lingered longest unread on my shelves. Next on that pile is A Tall Man In A Low Land: Some Time Among the Belgians, by Harry Pearson.

Friday, July 25th, 2025 01:47 pm
This is health/health care, specifically vaccines, but it's related to US politics: If you live in the United States and are wondering whether you can get a flu shot this fall, yes they will be available. Whether you have to pay for it depends on what kind of insurance you have. The following applies specifically to the flu vaccine, and not to most other vaccines.

If you have Medicare, the seasonal flu shot is covered at no charge. For adults with private insurance, that's up to the insurer, and Dr. Jeremy Faust thinks most insurance companies will cover it. For children, either their insurance covers the flu vaccine, or they can get it from the "Vaccines for Children" program, but only in certain locations, which do not include the pediatrician's office. I'm linking to Dr. Faust's post, and his description is complicated because it's describing a complicated situation.

https://insidemedicine.substack.com/p/is-rfk-jr-calling-the-shots-who-can

That article says that federal law also has specific rules for three other vaccines--pneumococcus, covid, and hepatitis B--but neither Dr. Faust nor the website he links to say whether the same rules apply to them and to seasonal flu shots.
Saturday, July 26th, 2025 03:14 am

INFOSEC “awareness” campaigns remain the plastic recycling of the IT industry. Which is to say, something functionally useless but excellent at their true purpose of shifting blame from companies and onto end users . . .

Leave a comment.+

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Friday, July 25th, 2025 07:11 pm
It's Friday, and there's still two days to go until the end of week eleven. Posting for this week officially ends Sunday, July 27 17.00 UTC. There is a grace period until the week is finally called 'closed'.

We have 4 regular participants so far, and 4 participants in the team challenge. Feel free to check the score lists. The total score and the teams will be counted on Sunday. If you find a mistake or you have any questions, don't hesitate to leave a comment here.


You can earn 15 regular weekly points + some extra points when using the lucky color.

You can use a wildcard at any time, to grab any prompt from your promptlist. The connected color prompt won't change!

You can post two fills for the team challenge. Even if you haven't signed up, you can participate as a joker to support a team. Joker fills can't earn any individual points!
Friday, July 25th, 2025 05:49 pm

Writer: David Anthony Kraft

Pencils: Pablo Marcos

Inks: Vince Colletta


The Secret Society takes on the might of Mantis! (Not that one!)


Read more... )

Friday, July 25th, 2025 04:04 pm
A textured cutout collage of multiple pairs of eyes with differing characteristics taken from a diverse group of people. The heading "Fanlore, Themed Month: Fandom in Color Editing Chate" is placed in center.ALT

As part of Fanlore’s Fandom in Color month, we’re holding two editing chats over on our Discord on Sat July 26 at 10pm UTC (What time is that for me?) and Sun July 27 at 3pm UTC (What time is that for me?}.

What is an “editing chat”? It’s a real-time chat where everyone works on doing some Fanlore editing, usually themed around pages of a certain topic. There’s no requirement to have edited Fanlore before, as we’re happy to show you the ropes!

The focus will be creating and adding to pages related to fans and fandom of color – characters, communities, events, activism, meta essays, and much more. If you’re passionate about expanding Fanlore’s coverage of this extremely under-served area – so are we! We’d love you to come along and take part. All participants will also earn a fun badge to post to their Fanlore user page!

Use this link to join our Discord server, and we’ll join you there for the chat!

—–

We value every contribution to our shared fandom history. If you’re new to editing Fanlore or wikis in general, visit our New Visitor Portal to get started or ask us questions here!

Friday, July 25th, 2025 04:41 pm

Posted by Alex Fuller

Bandai Namco and FromSoftware announced a new update for Elden Ring Nightreign. The version 1.02 update will release on July 30, 2025, and add dedicated two-player Duo Expeditions to the game, which is currently available on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. The update will also include quality-of-life UI improvements, including more Relics filtering options.

Elden Ring Nightreign is a standalone co-op action title set in the Elden Ring universe. The game sees squads of up to three players attempting to survive in the ever-shifting environment of Limveld. Players begin each session at the Roundtable Hold, where they choose from eight characters with their own distinct abilities, before being sent into Limveld to try and survive the coming Night’s Tide. The map shrinks as Night’s Tide approaches, with players having to end each night by facing off against a powerful boss, culminating in the third night where they battle the chosen Nightlord.

 

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The post Elden Ring Nightrein Adding Duo Expeditions Next Week appeared first on RPGamer.

Friday, July 25th, 2025 04:16 pm

Posted by Alex Fuller

Bandai Namco released a new producer diary video for action RPG Code Vein II. The two-minute video highlights the Motorcycle Forma, a spell that summons a motorbike that players and their partner character can ride to explore areas between dungeons.

A follow-up to 2019 action RPG Code Vein, Code Vein II is planned to release for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S in 2026. The game is set in a post-apocalyptic world where humanity’s existence is hanging by a thread. The sudden emergence of a threat known as the Luna Rapacis has seen Revenants — humans with supernatural abilities that come at the cost of severe bloodlust — transformed into creatures called Horrors. Players control a Revenant Hunter, who is guided by a mysterious girl named Lou. She possesses the power to travel into the past and does so in order to try and rewrite the fate of the world.

 

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The post Code Vein II Introduces the Motorcycle Forma appeared first on RPGamer.

Friday, July 25th, 2025 04:16 pm

Posted by Alex Fuller

2K Games and Gearbox Software released a new trailer for looter shooter Borderlands 4. The new video offers a gameplay overview for Rafa, one of the four new playable Vault Hunters in the game. Rafa acts as a combat veteran class who uses his Deadframe exo-suit to attack enemies at any distance.

He is armed with Arc-Knives for melee attacks, which shift the game into a third-person view when activated; over-the-shoulder Peacebreaker Cannons that attack targets in front of him and can use different types of ammunition or be deployed as a turret; and the APOPHIS Lance that allows him to fire volley of plasma or charged up shots. His Overdrive trait encourages players to use their Action Skills, boosting his movement speed and damage whenever a skill is active.

Borderlands 4 takes players to Kairos, where they search for valuable alien treasure while fighting the authoritarian Timekeeper. The game will introduce four new playable Vault Hunters and include cross-platform co-op multiplayer for up to four players. It will release on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S on September 12, 2025, with a Nintendo Switch 2 version following on October 3, 2025.

 

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The post Borderlands 4’s Rafa Gets Gameplay Trailer appeared first on RPGamer.

Friday, July 25th, 2025 06:17 pm
Foundation 3.03: Or, hang on, Selenak finally remembers something from books read three decades ago.... )
Friday, July 25th, 2025 03:59 pm

I don't think this is just me being An Old and thus cranky - or maybe my crankiness just dates back a long way - because this was a thing that used to annoy me back in the day when listservs were a thing and I was on quite a number relating to various aspects of history.

So anyway, somebody on bluesky asked a question about how to find certain kinds of records for C19th, and was aware that this was a question usefully addressed to archivists &/or historians -

- but didn't actually state WHERE they wanted records for. Whish is really of considerable relevance to whether one can respond e.g. 'Have you checked The National Archives Discovery'? (or, 'I expect you have already checked TNA Discovery, but here are some further possibilities....')

I made a bit of a cavil about this in a quote, indicating that this was a peeve of mine (dear sweet pet peeve, I stroke you) and they got a bit miffy, and said, read down thread for details.

Thing was, they had plenty of wordage left over to specify parameters in original post.

Why should I have to do that work to find out if this is a query I can usefully address out of Mi KnowinZ?

Some people on listservs used to be particularly bad, in that sometimes they didn't specify general period, either: what were we, telepaths???

This is the obverse of this thing I may have whinged about, which is that thing where I have asked for, say recommendations of readings on a very specific topic, or maybe very recent work on [topic], or similar, and somebody immediately shoots back something amazingly broad-brush and general that anyone in the field will have read and of very tangential pertinence to actual query.

(Honestly, and they expect people to be able to provide prompts that will come up with astonishingly helpful and correct answers from AI, mutter, fume, antimaccassar set to stun.)

Friday, July 25th, 2025 02:01 pm

Posted by fromtheheartofeurope

Non-fiction
The Politics of Serbia in the 1990s, by Robert Thomas (2004)
How Languages are Learned, by Patsy M. Lightbown and Nina Spada (2014)
Boy, by Roald Dahl (2016)
Hallelujah: The Story of a Musical Genius & the City That Brought His Masterpiece to Life, by Jonathan Bardon (2024)

Non-genre
Chloe Arguelle, by Amy Dillwyn (2023)
A Burglary, by Amy Dillwyn (2023)

SF
A Scanner Darkly, by Philip K. Dick (2015)
Gateways, ed. Elizabeth Anne Hull (2019)
The Transfer Problem by Adam Saint (2023)

Doctor Who
The Doctor Who Quiz Book of Dinosaurs, by Michael Holt (2018) [Fifth Doctor, quiz book]
The Unofficial Master Annual 2074, ed. Mark Worgan (2022) [Master]

Comics
Brussel in beeldekes: Mannekin Pis en andere sjarels, ed. Marc Verhaegen (2014)

Rather slim pickings today.

The best
Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly has flaws – every woman character is referred to by the size of her breasts – but the central theme of loss of self is utterly compelling. And the prediction of a 1977 book, that 1994 would see the war on drugs still being waged and lost, only with superior technology and occasional state collusion, turns out to have been entirely true; thirty years on from 1994, almost fifty since the book was written, we haven’t learned much. (Review; get it here.)

Honorable mention, also the one you haven’t heard of
Jonathan Bardon’s history of Handel’s Messiah is great on how he came to be in England, then in Ireland, and the social situation of 18th-century Dublin that almost guaranteed success. (Review; get it here)

The one to avoid
I got only fifty pages into The Transfer Problem, by Adam Saint. (Review; get it here.)

Friday, July 25th, 2025 01:16 pm

Posted by Kelley Ryan

This week’s RPG Backtrack answers the question, “How many stars does it take to save a world?”  According to the Suikoden series, it’s no less than 108.  We only have four stars for this podcast though: Ryan R., Robert, David, and Michael.

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The post RPG Backtrack 341 – So You Like Suikoden appeared first on RPGamer.

Sunday, July 27th, 2025 03:04 pm
I'm a little relieved. I mean, not very, I'd rather have the job, but if I'd gotten it then I'd maybe have had to interact with him again and who needs that?

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Friday, July 25th, 2025 02:32 pm

Writer: Jo Duffy

Pencils: Greg LaRocque

Inks: Ricardo Villamonte


A pimp hires Power Man and Iron Fist when a rampaging robot murders one of his girls.


Read more... )