M.D. Wilson @fighterbread

the most annoying thing about figuring things out before everyone else does is that you look like an idiot when no one else can see the logical chain, but then by the time you’re proven right it becomes so obvious it was inevitable that everyone retroactively decide it was always obvious.

There is a pain which nobody understands... Not too long after our first daughter died in the womb, one day before her due date, I got together with a good friend. The entire family was still very much grieving. Her death had been a shock. There had been no warning signs. When she was delivered, she was not malformed in any way, shape, or form, just covered in a lot of blood. It was one of the defining moments in our family’s history. We were still in the early days, so it was good to get together with a friend. My friend was a good man who also had pain related to his oldest daughter. She was beautiful like her mother, but a fairly low-functioning autistic girl. He opened up to me about how difficult life was. She didn’t sleep at normal times and would be up through the middle of the night. She was capable enough to unlock doors and get into just about everything. This was very hard for them as a married couple and for her younger siblings. I think there were multiple siblings, but there was at least one little sister. He was frustrated with his church not understanding. They had rightly asked whether he was disciplining her, because there is a temptation for parents with disabled children to go softer on them than they should. He assured me that he had, and I believed him. He went on to explain his frustration with how the church just didn’t understand what they were going through. In my head, I thought to myself, neither did I. So I asked him, well, you don’t know what it’s like to have a daughter die, do you? And he agreed that he didn’t. And I said I can’t imagine what it’s like to have a beautiful girl who is low-functioning but capable enough to disturb all of life and put herself in constant danger. How could I? I can only kind of get at it by thinking through it. Then I urged him to consider that it was at least partially his responsibility to help them understand as best he could. He took my exhortation in stride, and it was a refreshing shared cup of coffee in an otherwise gloomy season of my life. Again, there is a pain which nobody understands. I knew a young man who had been pursuing a girl all his life, and she finally said yes, only for her to get cancer and die a couple months later. I know a man who in his younger years was an abusive father and husband, only to get saved in his 60s, have a major heart change, and now find that his grown children and grandchildren want nothing to do with him. He had a big family, but he was all alone. I know barren couples who would make lovely parents. They love babies. They love that their friends have babies, but they struggle seeing what they love because it hurts. There are loveless marriages. There are decades of migraines that wear you down. There is the big investment opportunity that was a lie and wrecked your finances forever. There are near-infinite sources of pain, many of which you won’t experience, but someone you know will. Can you truly understand a pain you’ve never experienced? It depends what we mean by understand. For most of us, we can imagine it theoretically by relating it to some other pain we’ve experienced that, though different, serves as a kind of benchmark. After our daughter died, a girl I worked with, kind of a sorority-girl type, tried to relate to my pain by talking about how her dog had died. At first, I found this annoying. There is no equivalence between a child and a pet. But at that point in her life, that was the deepest pain she had known. As clumsy as it was, it was a genuine effort to relate. So I chose not to be offended. She just couldn’t understand. Another phrase I heard a lot in the year after the baby died was that people couldn’t imagine what it was like. More than a few times I quipped back, “Give it time.” I didn’t mean that they would experience the exact same pain. What I meant was that they would experience a pain that nobody understands, their pain. Something that reminds you every morning that this world is not how it ought to be. Something that reminds you of your deep need for the gospel of Jesus Christ. Something that makes you yearn for the resurrection. Our pain can bitter us. It can make us self-focused. It can make us angry that others just don’t get it. It can frustrate us when they try to relate in ways we think cheapen what we’re going through. We can allow that to happen. Or we can accept that unique suffering is part of human existence until the day all things are made right. Related to this is the way pain can become a little too precious to us. How many people end up defining themselves by a food allergy, a chronic condition, or a very real trauma that happened years ago? How often does that become the place all their conversations eventually lead? We live in an age where you are your trauma. To tell someone they need to mature to the point where they are not finally defined by it is treated as an attack on their identity. But you do have to learn to deal with pain in a faithful way. If you lost your sight, or were never able to have children, or your spouse has gone ahead of you to be with the Lord, that is part of your enduring reality. It doesn’t go away. It shapes your life. Pretending otherwise is dishonest. At the same time, there’s a real difference between “getting over” something, as if you could just ignore it, and learning to deal with it in a godly way. Faithfulness doesn’t mean denial. It means refusing to let suffering become the organizing center of who you are. Sometimes that pain that nobody else seems to understand becomes the very means by which you’re able to minister to others who are convinced their suffering is unique. You can speak to them with credibility, not theory. You’ve been there in a way. And in doing so, you’re able to lead them out of the darkness of self-preoccupation and back into the good gifts the Lord still has for them in this life, and into hope fixed on the far greater things He has prepared for them in the world to come.

This is one of the greatest lines by Tolkien. Filled with profound wisdom and reality: “Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.”

In 1936, J. R. R. Tolkien published a Christmas poem titled “Noel” in the annual magazine of Our Lady's Abingdon, in Oxfordshire. The poem was lost to history for nearly 80 years until scholars Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull rediscovered it in the archives. It reads: Grim was the world and grey last night: The moon and stars were fled, The hall was dark without song or light, The fires were fallen dead. The wind in the trees was like to the sea, And over the mountains' teeth It whistled bitter-cold and free, As a sword leapt from its sheath. The lord of snows upreared his head; His mantle long and pale Upon the bitter blast was spread And hung o'er hill and dale. The world was blind, the boughs were bent, All ways and paths were wild: Then the veil of cloud apart was rent, And here was born a Child. The ancient dome of heaven sheer Was pricked with distant light; A star came shining white and clear Alone above the night. In the dale of dark in that hour of birth One voice on a sudden sang: Then all the bells in Heaven and Earth Together at midnight rang. Mary sang in this world below: They heard her song arise O'er mist and over mountain snow To the walls of Paradise, And the tongue of many bells was stirred in Heaven's towers to ring When the voice of mortal maid was heard, That was mother of Heaven's King. Glad is the world and fair this night With stars about its head, And the hall is filled with laughter and light, And fires are burning red. The bells of Paradise now ring With bells of Christendom, And Gloria, Gloria we will sing That God on earth is come.

I have spent the last 2 years discovering & marking uncharted cities, villages, pyramids & geoglyphs across the Eastern US using LiDAR. I’ve mapped well over 100 sites. Next year we hit the field. North America has many secrets left to be uncovered. The vast majority of 2026 will be in-the-field… The city in this photo is hidden deep in the forests of the American Southeast…

In a letter to his son, Robert E Lee urged the young man to cultivate the virtue of frankness: “You must study to be frank with the world: frankness is the child of honest courage. Say what you mean to do on every occasion, and take it for granted you mean to do right. If a friend should ask a favor, you should grant it, if it is possible and reasonable; if not, tell him plainly why you cannot. You will wrong him and yourself by equivocation of any kind. Never do a wrong thing to make a friend or keep one. The man who requires you to do so is dearly purchased at a sacrifice. Deal kindly but firmly with all your classmates. You will find it the policy which wears best. Above all do not appear to others what you are not. If you have any fault to find with anyone, tell him, not others, of what you complain. There is no more dangerous experiment than that of undertaking to be one thing before a man's face and another behind his back.”

@elonmusk My wife was having 10/10 pain, went to the ER immediately. I sent pictures of her vitals screen and plugged her symptoms into AI - it figured it out hours before the doctor diagnosed it as a bile leak.

The most hated character from Harry Potter is not Voldemort. It’s not Bellatrix. Not even Draco. It’s Umbridge. Ask yourself why.

The over the top meltdown over Candace is the clearest sign she’s over the target. The fact that this account from Australia is obsessed with her is way beyond suspicious. They don’t spend this kind of energy on a crazy person who’s making stuff up.

Nathan Livingstone (MilkBarTV) @TheMilkBarTV

8 months ago

Candace Owens: Charlie Kirk was killed to stop my investigation into Brigitte Macron being in the Stanford Prison Experiment - which I was about to crack. CUT TO Candace Owens' Brigitte Macron Stanford Prison Experiment investigation: PURE GIBBERISH

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🚨 URGENT Two days ago I was contacted by a high-ranking employee of the French Government. After determining this person’s position and proximity to the French couple, I have deemed the information they gave me to be credible enough to share publicly in the event that something happens. In short, this person claims that the Macrons have executed upon and paid for my assassination. Yes, you read that correctly. More specifically, that the green light was given to a small team in National Gendamarie Intervention Group. I am told there is one Israeli that is on this assasination squad and the plans were formalized. Again, this person provided concrete proof that they are well placed within the French government apparatus. Further to this point, this person claims that Charlie Kirk’s assassin trained with the French legion 13th brigade with multi-state involvement. Journalist Xavier Poussard’s life is also at risk. This is deadly serious. The head of state of France apparently wants us both dead and has authorized professional units to carry this out. I ask that every person RETWEET and share this. I do not know who in the American government can be trusted, since this source claims our leaders are aware. But I have more specific information which is definitively verifiable, should they care to reach out to me. To the brave official in France who did this because they were so moved by the evil of Charlie’s public execution to risk their own life— May God bless you. Truly. Let all be revealed.

Christopher Tolkien is a case study in what it means to "honor thy father." The most loyal son a man could hope to have.

ithaca rising 🇫🇷 🇬🇧 @ithacarising

8 months ago

Keep up your hobbitry in heart, and think that all stories feel like that when you are in them. You are inside a very great story! - J.R.R. Tolkien, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 66 to Christopher Tolkien on 6 May 1944. Christopher Tolkien more than once interrupted his

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Lady... Sauron launched his attack prematurely because he was afraid his enemies had found the Ring and had plans to use it against him, and he wanted to crush them before they established a solid defense. Furthermore, while Sauron was in physical form, he was in pretty rough shape and in no condition to search for the Ring himself. Sauron is an incredible strategist, and while his strategy did end up failing him, it's based on pretty sound logic. The thought that someone would seek to destroy instead of use the Ring wasn't something he considered, and that assumption had precedent. Next time, don't skim the wiki.

So now Ben Shapiro, Randy Fine and Lindsey Graham are considered MAGA, but Marjorie Greene, Tucker Carlson, and Thomas Massie are not? Your Israel First “MIGA” movement is dead. The America First Movement is the future.

I think a lot of Christians don’t understand how close we are to ending back in a situation like 2020. Again, Trump‘s reelection was merely a momentary “reprieve.” It was a pause in the momentum. Will it be used at a national level to make lasting positive change in the right direction? Hard to say. I do know that it’s probably best to act like it won’t and triple down on your efforts locally.

America First, America Only

Does anyone really GAF if half the colleges and universities in this country shutdown? They are indoctrination camps. Shut them down.

Facial reading experts interpret that expression as smugness. The “empathetic smile” isn’t genuine (cheeks rise but don’t reach the eyes) and micro-expressions of contempt leak through. It’s fake empathy mixed with superiority. Certified liberal smuggie.

Justin Murphy @jmrphy

8 months ago

Now that everyone's had their fun, it must be said that Katherine Stoeffel has been unfairly maligned by a mob that cannot read faces. The science of facial expressions has mapped every inch of the face and linked every contortion to its emotional meaning, and the two

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These are Vance's comments from a month ago. Has the admin changed it's position?

Defiant L’s @DefiantLs

9 months ago

JD Vance: "This idea that American citizens don't have the talent to do great things, that you have to import a foreign class of servants and... professors to do these things… I reject that."

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If a company can’t survive without foreign labor, it should fail. If a farm can’t survive without foreign labor, it should fail. If a school can’t survive without foreign students, it should fail.