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Author Topic: What's on your mind? Chat Thread  (Read 17075 times)

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guest131

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Re: What's on your mind? Chat Thread
« Reply #208 on: January 12, 2021, 09:21:04 pm »
I had a bad experience yesterday. I had taken a Lyft to go back home after visiting my son. It was cold and I was wearing my long coat. So the Lyft arrives and the first thing I notice is that the windows were down maybe four or five inches before I even got into the car.. I thought that was strange because it was cold. It was a young female driver. So I get in the car and try to be friendly but she was acting unfriendly. There was just that negative vibe I was getting from her but I continued to try to be friendly. We arrive at my home and I say thank you and stay safe. I got out of the car and before I could close the door, she turned around holding a can of Lysol and sprayed it on the exact place where I had been sitting. I closed the door and walked away saying out loud, how rude. I've never had a Lyft driver act that way. I think I know why she was acting that way. I've encountered some other people who acted the same way not with a can of Lysol but not being friendly and giving me dirty looks. The important thing is to keep a cool head and not react or make a scene. I'm an easy going person but not everybody is like that and a situation can get out of hand and even turn violent if someone says or does something to offend another person. I've seen it happen over the smallest of things. I try to avoid confrontations even if I am offended by what someone says or does. The best thing to do is just walk away. Only in extreme situations where I feel that my life is in danger will I react and I will react to defend myself.
I am really happy that you are safe going to have faith I understand how it feels to feel very offended I would do the same thing is walk away.. wish you all the best and you stay and well and stay healthy.
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patrick jane

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Re: What's on your mind? Chat Thread
« Reply #209 on: January 30, 2021, 11:22:50 pm »

https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2021/january-web-only/wall-street-gamestop-parable-what-if-we-are-all-1-percent.html








In the GameStop Frenzy, What If We’re All the 1 Percent?





Jesus’ economic justice doesn’t mean beating the rich at their own game.


Everybody loves a David and Goliath story. In recent days, millions of aspiring Davids took on one of society’s least favorite Goliaths: Wall Street.

It all started with a Reddit page called WallStreetBets. Many of the 3 million amateur investors involved in the chat room decided to come together to coordinate the purchase of stocks in a handful of companies. By doing so, they generated a massive increase in the value of those companies’ stock. GameStop’s market value, for instance, went from $2 billion to $24 billion in just a few days. While this created an enormous profit margin for individual investors, it also nearly bankrupted a hedge fund that had bet against GameStop by short selling their shares.

By all accounts, many folks involved celebrated both outcomes. “You stand for everything that I hated during [the financial crisis],” one user wrote in an open letter to the hedge funds. “You are a firm who makes money off of exploiting a company and manipulating markets and media to your advantage.” One evangelical pastor even drew on Jesus’ parable about the rich fool (Luke 12:13–21) who used his profits to build a bigger barn to describe what was happening. “Since 2008, it feels like Wall Street has had an overabundant harvest, financed by public money, and rather than share the billions with the less fortunate, they’ve built bigger and bigger barns for themselves.”

I certainly see what he means, especially when we consider the likely economic realities behind the parable. When the rich man tears down his barns to build bigger ones, he probably isn’t creating an enormous rainy-day savings fund. He’s more likely opening the first-century equivalent of a one-man hedge fund. But focusing on the way the parable puts financial Goliaths in the crosshairs may cause us to miss another group targeted by Jesus’ strange story: us.

While the vast majority of farmers in Jesus’ day would have been engaged in some form of subsistence agriculture, large landowners were increasingly profiting off grain speculation. Those who had enough of an agricultural surplus could afford to keep their grain off the market while prices were low. Then, when grain was scarce and people were hungry, they could sell their surplus at a massive profit. Such speculation wreaked havoc on the local economy while allowing the opportunist to profit both financially and socially from the chaos he helped create.

Against this background, Jesus condemns at least two aspects of the rich man’s greed. Not only does the rich man fail to share from his abundance, but he apparently plans to use the economic power his abundance affords him to gain further riches for himself at the expense of his neighbors.

Jesus’ parable offers a warning to those who made ludicrous profits while creating a crisis that devastated the global economy. It’s hard to imagine that the Jesus who characterized a first-century agro-entrepreneur as a malicious fool would overlook the way bank CEOs claimed multimillion-dollar Wall Street bonuses while Main Street burned. Surely the Jesus who sniffed out the money-loving Pharisees’ hypocrisy (Luke 12:1) would have something to say about modern-day financial market manipulation.

But notice why Jesus tells the parable in the first place. A man from the crowd asks Jesus to help him get a share of his inheritance. While we don’t know anything certain about this man’s economic status, we do know that the vast majority of Jesus’ audience faced brutal poverty, the likes of which hardly any American can imagine. Carol Wilson argues that a quarter of the population of Palestine in Jesus’ day was so destitute they were “slowly starving to death,” while another 30 percent hovered “precariously near the edge of subsistence.” Only an elite 3 percent of the population was secure against economic poverty. It’s likely, then, that the man asking for help with his inheritance faced serious economic hardship. It’s certain that most of Jesus’ audience did.

It is this primarily poor audience that Jesus warns about the need to “guard themselves against all kinds of greed.” Jesus’ anti-greed parable wasn’t only a warning for the super-rich. It was also a warning about the kind of financial insatiability that Jesus believed even the poor could get caught up in.

As best I can tell, the WallStreetBets folks got involved because they wanted to make money quickly. One of the most popular trading platforms, Robinhood, advertised their services as allowing “people like us” to trade “just like the big guys.” So while these investors’ actions put the squeeze on a hedge fund, their market manipulation also sought to create quick, substantial profits for themselves.

I’m not sure that’s all necessarily sinful. But when we wield the parable of the rich fool as a weapon against the super-rich, we risk missing the way Jesus offered it as a challenge to folks like us.

The danger here is much bigger than this week’s stock market story. The danger is that in the face of a deeply dysfunctional economic system and corruption by the super-rich, middle-class American Christians forget that in global and historical terms, we are the 1 percent.

Every single investor in GameStop lives a life of unimaginable comfort and wealth compared to the vast majority of those Jesus warned about their greed. Most of us are richer than the fictitious rich fool in terms of life expectancy, health, and luxury items. Economically speaking, compared to the typical first-century Jesus-follower, we are kings and pharaohs living lives of unimaginable security and ease. Yet middle-class Christians consistently read Jesus’ warning about the wealthy as applying to somebody else. We, the richest people who have ever lived, read ourselves in the role of the peasant and find somebody further up the economic ladder to play the part of the fool.

We all do this. We talk about being “poor college students” while attending schools that cost enough to feed entire villages in the global south. Pastors and professors like me regularly remind people “we sure don’t do it for the money,” even though the money gives us some of the highest standards of living experienced in human history.

As that Robinhood advertisement makes clear, we often criticize the large-scale behavior of the “big guys” while imitating it in our own economic practices. For years, Christian economist Bob Goudzwaard has warned about the ways that financial markets have gotten out of hand, with devastating effects on the “real economy” at home and abroad. While I wouldn’t claim that all hedge funds are intrinsically immoral, aspects of our contemporary financial markets, like aspects of the grain market in Jesus’ day, demand prophetic confrontation.

But we shouldn’t confuse fighting for a better seat at the blackjack table with confronting an economy addicted to gambling. That’s especially true when either gambler’s loss can wreak havoc on the lives of others. After all, it’s not just Wall Street financiers who invest in hedge funds; pension funds, like the ones that fund the retirements of school teachers and firefighters, do too. We ignore the ways we are the rich fools at our own moral and spiritual peril and at our neighbors’ expense.

Jesus doesn’t tell his flock to beat the rich fool at his own game. He invites them to live an economic life free from greed or fear, storing up treasure in heaven by giving generously to the poor (Luke 12:33).

Such kingdom investments include charity to the destitute, but, as Brian Fikkert, Robby Holt, and I argue in Practicing the King’s Economy, it also includes orienting the whole of one’s economic life toward love of God and love of neighbor.

If we want to invest in Jesus’ kingdom, I suspect there are better ways than squeezing hedge funds. We could invest in black and brown business with the help of lending platforms like WeFunder and Kiva. We could invest our money and social connections in organizations that help the economically poor build wealth through education or homeownership. We could creatively protest some of the dysfunctions of our economic system while remembering that Jesus’ parable is a warning for us as much as it is for financial professionals.








Michael J. Rhodes is an Old Testament lecturer at Carey Baptist College and co-author of Practicing the King’s Economy: Honoring Jesus in How We Work, Earn, Spend, Save, and Give.

Speaking Out is Christianity Today’s guest opinion column and (unlike an editorial) does not necessarily represent the opinion of the publication.
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guest131

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Re: What's on your mind? Chat Thread
« Reply #210 on: January 31, 2021, 06:14:06 pm »
On my mind helping a friend hanging with people I care about sure am having fun with them that is for sure Thanks to you hon got a lot on my mind but I am happy over creating and helping out as well..I did stuff I never done before in creating it's amazing much thanks  :)
Quote
patrick jane
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guest17

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Re: What's on your mind? Chat Thread
« Reply #211 on: February 04, 2021, 01:09:21 am »
I've been crying for a few days. My heart is so broken. For more than one reason. But this too shall pass.
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guest17

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Re: What's on your mind? Chat Thread
« Reply #212 on: February 04, 2021, 01:12:13 am »
I am really happy that you are safe going to have faith I understand how it feels to feel very offended I would do the same thing is walk away.. wish you all the best and you stay and well and stay healthy.
Thank you. I appreciate that.
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guest8

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Re: What's on your mind? Chat Thread
« Reply #213 on: February 05, 2021, 06:49:16 pm »
I've been crying for a few days. My heart is so broken. For more than one reason. But this too shall pass.

may I ask why you heart is so Broken?

Blade
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guest17

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Re: What's on your mind? Chat Thread
« Reply #214 on: February 05, 2021, 09:13:55 pm »
I've been crying for a few days. My heart is so broken. For more than one reason. But this too shall pass.

may I ask why you heart is so Broken?

Blade
The main reason is that my oldest son got a puppy about a year ago and I became very attached to him like he was my own dog. Then my oldest son had to move and the place he's moving to doesn't allow pets. So he had to give up the dog. Although a family member agreed to take him, I was crushed. I couldn't take him because I'm only allowed one pet and I have a cat. I just worry about the effect this is going to have on Charlie, the dog. The separation anxiety, the feeling of abandonment etc. The problems adjusting to a new home. And will he be properly taken care of. Will he be safe. It's just heartbreaking.
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patrick jane

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Re: What's on your mind? Chat Thread
« Reply #215 on: February 05, 2021, 09:46:57 pm »
I've been crying for a few days. My heart is so broken. For more than one reason. But this too shall pass.

may I ask why you heart is so Broken?

Blade
The main reason is that my oldest son got a puppy about a year ago and I became very attached to him like he was my own dog. Then my oldest son had to move and the place he's moving to doesn't allow pets. So he had to give up the dog. Although a family member agreed to take him, I was crushed. I couldn't take him because I'm only allowed one pet and I have a cat. I just worry about the effect this is going to have on Charlie, the dog. The separation anxiety, the feeling of abandonment etc. The problems adjusting to a new home. And will he be properly taken care of. Will he be safe. It's just heartbreaking.
I'm praying for little Charlie dear and you and your son.
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guest17

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Re: What's on your mind? Chat Thread
« Reply #216 on: February 06, 2021, 12:01:30 pm »
I've been crying for a few days. My heart is so broken. For more than one reason. But this too shall pass.

may I ask why you heart is so Broken?

Blade
The main reason is that my oldest son got a puppy about a year ago and I became very attached to him like he was my own dog. Then my oldest son had to move and the place he's moving to doesn't allow pets. So he had to give up the dog. Although a family member agreed to take him, I was crushed. I couldn't take him because I'm only allowed one pet and I have a cat. I just worry about the effect this is going to have on Charlie, the dog. The separation anxiety, the feeling of abandonment etc. The problems adjusting to a new home. And will he be properly taken care of. Will he be safe. It's just heartbreaking.
I'm praying for little Charlie dear and you and your son.
Thank you so much PJ.

patrick jane

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Re: What's on your mind? Chat Thread
« Reply #217 on: March 30, 2021, 04:26:07 pm »
Satanism being pushed to the youth to normalize it. This is the time in which we live.

Lil Nas X's 'Satan Shoe' — made with one drop of human blood — sold out in under a minute, bringing in nearly $700,000

Singer Lil Nas X's "Satan Shoe" — made with one drop of human blood — sold out in under a minute, the company told Insider.

Brooklyn-based startup MSCHF released the shoe on March 26, and said each one individually numbered 666 pairs would contain 60cc ink and one drop of human blood. The company released the 666 shoes for $1,018 each, as a nod to the Bible verse Luke 10:18: "So He told them, 'I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.'"

MSCHF co-founder Daniel Greenberg confirmed the shoe sold out in under a minute, but did not reveal whether the release was the company's most profitable. At the listed price, the release adds up to nearly $700,000 in sales.

The shoe knocks off the Nike Air Max 97, but Nike had no involvement in the shoe.

"We do not have a relationship with Little Nas X or MSCHF. Nike did not design or release these shoes, and we do not endorse them," Nike said in a statement to The New York Times.

Greenberg told the Times six team members gave up blood to go into the collaboration with Lil Nas X.

Insider's Paige Leskin previously reported MSCHF has gone viral for selling unusual items like a $10 toaster bath bomb, an app for making stock investments based on astrological signs, and Nike sneakers filled with Holy Water.

MSCHF, co-founded in 2016 by former BuzzFeed employee Gabriel Whaley, received $11.5 million in funding as of January 2020. The company's Push Party app said it has a valuation of $200 million following an undisclosed deal with the venture capital firm Founders Fund.


https://www.businessinsider.com/lil-nas-x-satan-shoe-sells-out-under-one-minute-2021-3

Nike sues over Lil Nas X 'Satan Shoes' with human blood in soles

Nike filed a federal trademark infringement lawsuit Monday against the company that released a controversial customized version of its sneakers in collaboration with the rapper Lil Nas X.

The release of the Satan Shoes coincides with Lil Nas X's latest single, "Montero (Call Me By Your Name)," and its accompanying music video. In the video, Lil Nas X is seduced out of what appears to be the Garden of Eden, falls into hell and gives the devil a lap dance.


https://news.yahoo.com/nike-sues-over-lil-nas-212300938.html

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Re: What's on your mind? Chat Thread
« Reply #218 on: April 03, 2021, 07:24:56 pm »
The Ark Encounter - Kentucky



10 minutes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeNOURXWCmM&list=WL&index=103


The Ark Encounter was opened on July 7, 2016 and it's the full replica based on a Biblical scale. It's 510 feet long, 85 feet wide and 51 feet high. It's operated by Answers in Genesis, a group that also runs the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky.

This is a theme park, zoo, restaurant and museum. It's located in Grant County Kentucky and is open year-round. There were well over one million visitors during it's first year of operation from July 2016 - July 2017. There are models of Dinosaurs, massive timbers in the center and multiple decks with attractions.
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guest17

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Re: What's on your mind? Chat Thread
« Reply #220 on: April 15, 2021, 09:05:15 am »
My doctor went ballistic on me yesterday. I will not be bullied into doing something that I don't want to do. Period.
Case closed.

I've already been pumped full of chemo poison and had radiation directed over my heart and lung. Now I'm supposed to play russian roulette with a vaccine. Enough is enough.
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