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Q: how to use the groovy script with params in logstash At first I use the dynamic script to update data to es. But it seems causes memory leak. So I changed the script type to file. I want to get the fields from logstash's filter as params for the script. The question is : how to set params for the script like the elasticsearch's api?

A: I have been solved my question.
I'm using variable set by 'script_var_name' which contains the logstash's event itself that can be used in the script.
Hope useful for everyone.
ref:https://discuss.elastic.co/t/update-nested-object-using-script-with-params-in-logstash-elasticsearch-output/49983/13

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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Home » AIT Worldwide Logistics opens newest location in Mexico City
AIT Worldwide Logistics opens newest location in Mexico City
AIT Worldwide Logistics' ongoing global expansion is continuing with the opening of a new location at Mexico City International Airport.
"We're eager to expand our reach and strengthen our service offerings with this newest location," said Vaughn Moore, CEO and President of AIT. "Mexico City is major hub and a key city for our growing international network. This office will play a significant role in broadening our scope of solutions between Mexico and the United States, as well as Asia and Europe."
According to Moore, AIT-Mexico City will provide a complete array of logistics products, including transborder expertise, warehousing, customs brokerage and IMMEX services, with a focus on air freight, particularly in the automotive, food logistics, technology and life sciences sectors. Placing AIT's fifth location in Mexico in the continent's most populous city, and at the country's biggest airport, was a strategic decision, according to AIT's Managing Director Mexico, Daniel Estrada.
"We've been looking forward to adding Mexico City to our network," he said. "It's a mecca for major business, with tremendous client diversity, access to our current customers and government agencies, and a location central to growers in the southern part of the country."
According to Estrada, increased access to farmers is a key differentiator for the food logistics market, as is the cold chain infrastructure already in place at Mexico City International Airport.
"We selected an on-site location at the airport because it gives us direct access to the cargo terminal, speeding up turnaround times and communication," he added.
Located at Mexico City International Airport, AIT-Mexico City is AIT's fifth station in the country, along with locations in Guadalajara, Hermosillo, Monterrey and Tijuana.
About AIT Worldwide Logistics
Founded in 1979, Itasca, Illinois-based AIT Worldwide Logistics is a full-service transportation management provider with more than 60 offices forming a network that spans the globe. By coupling a flexible business model with robust technology that presents end-to-end shipment visibility, AIT delivers precisely tailored supply chain solutions for almost every industry imaginable. Leveraging creative, competitively priced multimodal services, AIT removes the complexity from global logistics puzzles, helping companies thrive by regaining focus on the core goals of their business.
Logistics Logistics Outsourcing
Menlo Worldwide Boosts Warehousing Services in Mexico City
Georgia Tech Collaborates on Trade and Logistics Center in Mexico City

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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When Any Doesn't Mean Every
In 2016, Daughters (then ages 14 and 11) were the children of Mother [M] and Father [F], all American citizens but living in Tijuana, Mexico.
From an anonymous tip, the Mexican Department of Integrity of Families [DIF], began investigating the welfare of the girls. They found the girls living in an abandoned house without electricity or running water and overrun with cockroaches. The girls told DIF that F was an alcoholic and drug addict, and M slept all day and also used alcohol and drugs. Neither parent worked, and the girls only ate one meal per day. According to DIF, the girls looked emaciated.
DIF removed the girls from the home, placed them in a care shelter and advised the parents on how to reunify with their children. M and F never attempted reunification, nor even contacted the girls while they were in the shelter.
In March of 2017, DIF contacted the San Diego County Health and Human Services Agency [Agency] because the girls were American citizens. The Agency took the children to California and filed a dependency petition.
The girls were placed with their maternal grandmother. They thrived in their grandmother's care. They attend school for the first time in a year and became healthy.
The case was investigated for the Agency by social worker Y. The girls told Y they did not want to return to their parents and be hungry again. Y also spoke with the girls' brother. He told Y that the girls were subjected to unrelated men in the household, one attempting to molest the older girl.
Y also made numerous attempts to contact F and M regarding unification with their daughters. The attempts were unsuccessful for almost a year.
Finally, F contacted the Agency requesting the return of his daughters. Programs for reunification were scheduled, with the help of DIF, including drug testing, phone calls with the girls, etc., but neither F nor M complied with any of them. However, F and M did show up for the hearings.
At the first hearing, the court ordered attorneys to represent F, M, and the girls. The Agency was represented by its own attorney. F and M wanted reunification, but the girls' attorney wanted permanent custody granted to the grandmother.
At a later hearing, Y requested the court dismiss the dependency petitions, stating: "Despite the Agency's concerns that the parents have not had communication with the Agency since 9/13/2017 and they have not followed through with four drug tests or any appointments with DIF for a home evaluation, there is no evidence that the children will be at any risk under the parents' care. Furthermore, the parents had previously communicated that they would like their children returned to their care and that the mother had expressed that she would have a plan to pick up the children from maternal grandmother." She also stated the reason there was no evidence is because DIF failed to provide written documentation to the Agency. Therefore, there was no proof that the girls were living in deplorable conditions, nor that their parents were on drugs.
The children's attorney argued that it was not in the girls' best interests to be returned to their parents, and she requested an Allen hearing. (Under the Allen case, when a social services agency seeks to dismiss a dependency petition over the child's objection, the juvenile court must determine whether dismissal is in the interests of justice and the minor's welfare.)
The court agreed with the girls' attorney that there was more than enough "proof" that returning the girls to their parents was not in the girl's best interests.
However, relying on Welfare and Institutions Code Section 300g, the judge believed he had to return the girls to their parents. The code states in part, "[if the] child has been left without any provision for support ...Or a relative or other adult custodian with whom the child resides or has been left is unwilling or unable to provide care or support for the child, the whereabouts of the parent are unknown, and reasonable efforts to locate the parent have been unsuccessful." Since the grandmother was willing to provide for the children, this section did not apply, and the court dismissed the case and returned the children to their parents. The children's attorney appealed.
The Appellate Court agreed with the girls' attorney: "Grandmother's willingness to provide for minors' care, a relevant fact if dependency jurisdiction was sought under the last criteria, is not an exception to, and does not trump, a finding that the child has been left without provision for his or her support when dependency jurisdiction is asserted under the first clause of section 300(g).
The girls were ordered to remain with their grandmother.
November 23, 2022 Child Custody & the Holidays Read More
September 15, 2022 Shared Custody and Extracurricular Activities Read More
June 02, 2022 How Does Parental Relocation Work in California? Read More


Attorney Joe Fried is Board Certified in Truck Accident Law by the National Board of Trial Advocacy.
Joe Fried is a partner in the Atlanta, GA law firm of Fried, Rogers, Goldberg, LLC. He is a former City of Atlanta Police Officer.
Joe represents clients nationwide in high value, high profile truck crash cases often leading to permanent disability or death. His representation has helped induce record and landmark settlements and judgements for his clients.
Joe is also a staunch advocate of truck safety, having seen first as a police officer, and now as an attorney, the impact of bad and illegal safety practices by truck drivers and trucking companies, he has made it his mission to make the roads safer.
Joe Fried co-founded the Academy of Truck Accident Attorneys in 2015. The non-profit organization now counts more than 500 attorneys as members.
Truck Accident Attorney Joe Fried, co-founder of the ATAA.
Joe Fried discusses his role as a truck safety advocate.
Download speeches and documents from Joe Fried.
Contact Joe Fried directly, or through the ATAA Communications Office by using the form below.


Bengal Alluvion And Diluvion Regulation, 1825.
4. First. Lands gained by gradual accession from recess of river of sea. Extent of interest in increment of person in possession.
5. Encroachments on beds of navigable rivers and other obstructions.
The Bengal Alluvion And Diluvion Regulation, 1825.
A Regulation for declaring the rules to be observed in determining claims to lands grained by alluvion, or by dereliction of a river or the sea.
1. Preamble. - In consequence of the frequent changes which take place in the channel of the principals rivers that interest the [territories] immediately subject to the Presidency of Fort William and the shifting of the sands which lie in the beds of those rivers, chars or small islands are often thrown up by alluvion in the midst of the stream, or near one of the banks, and large portions of land are carried away by an encroachment of the river on one side, whilst accessions of land are at the same time, or in subsequent years, gained by dereliction of the water on the opposite side; similar instances of alluvion, encroachment and dereliction also sometimes occur on the seacoast which borders the southern and south-eastern limits of Bengal.
The lands gained from the rivers or sea by the means above mentioned are a frequent source of contention and affray, and although the law and custom of the country have established rules applicable to such cases, these rules not being generally known, the Courts of Justice have sometimes found it difficult to determine the rights of litigant parties claiming chars or other lands gained in the manner above described.
The Court of Sadar Diwani Adalat, with a view to ascertain the legal provisions of the Muhammadan and Hindu laws on this subject, called for reports from their law officers of each persuasion, and on consideration of the reports furnished by the law officers in consequence, as well as of the decisions which have been passed by the Court of Sadar Diuiani Adalat in cases brought before them in appeal which involved the rights of claimants to lands gained by alluvion, or by dereliction of rivers or the sea, the Governor-General in Council has deemed it proper to enact the following rules for the general information of individuals as well as for the guidance of Courts of Judicature; to be in force, as soon as promulgated throughout the whole of the [territories] subject to the Presidency of Fort William.
2. Claims and disputes as to alluvial lands to be decided by usage when clearly recognised and established. - Whenever any clear and definite usage of Shikast paiwast respecting the disjunction and junction of land by the encroachment or recess of a river may have been immemorially established for determining the rights of the proprietors of two or more contiguous estates divided by a river (such as that the main channel of the river dividing the estates shall be the constant boundary between them, whatever changes may take place in the course of the river, by encroachment on one side and accession on the other), the usage so established shall govern the decision of all claims and disputes relative to alluvial land between the parties whose estates may be liable to such usage.
3. Where no usage established, claims how decided. - Where there may be no local usage of the nature referred to in the preceding section, the general rules declared in the following section shall be applied to the determination of all claims and disputes relative to lands gained by alluvion or by dereliction either of a river or the sea.
Provided that the increment of land thus obtained shall not entitle the person in possession of the estate or tenure to which the land may be annexed to a right of property or permanent interest therein beyond that possessed by him in the estate or tenure to which the land may be annexed, and shall not in any case be understood to exempt the holder of it from the payment to [the Government] of any assessment for the public revenue to which it may be liable under the provisions of Regulation II, 1819, or of any other Regulation in force.
Nor, if annexed to a subordinate tenure held under a superior landholder, shall the under-tenant, whether a khudkasht raiyat, holding a maurusi istimrari tenure at a fixed rate of rent per bigha, or any other description of under-tenant liable by his engagements, or by established usage, to an increase of rent for the land annexed to his tenure by alluvion, be considered exempt from the payment of any increase of rent to which he may be justly liable.
Second. - When river by sudden change of course intersects estate. - The above rule shall not be considered applicable to cases in which a river, by a sudden change of its course, may break through and intersect an estate, without any gradual encroachment, or may by the violence of stream separate a considerable piece of land from one estate and join it to another estate, without destroying the identity and preventing the recognition of the land so removed.
In such cases the land, on being clearly recognised, shall remain the property of its original owner.
Third. - Chars thrown up in navigable river. Property therein when channel fordable - When a char or island may be thrown up in a large navigable river (the bed of which is not the property of an individual), or in the sea, and the channel of the river or sea between such island and the shore may not be fordable, it shall, according to established usage, be at the disposal of [the Government].
But if the channel between such island and the shore be fordable at any season of the year, it shall be considered an accession to the land, tenure or tenures of the person or persons whose estate or estates may be most contiguous to it, subject to the several provisions specified in the first clause of this section with respect to increment of land by gradual accession.
Fourth. - Chars, etc., thrown up in small shallow rivers. - In small and shallow rivers, the beds of which, with the jalkar right of fishery, may have been heretofore recognised as the property of individuals, any sand-bank or char that may be thrown up shall, as hitherto belong to the proprietor of the bed of the river, subject to the provisions stated in the first clause of the present section.
Fifth. - Disputes relative to lands gained by alluvion or by dereliction not provided for by Regulation. - In all other cases, namely, in all cases of claims and disputes respecting land gained by alluvion or by dereliction of a river or the sea, which are not specifically provided for by the rules contained in this Regulation, the Courts of Justice, in deciding upon such claims and disputes, shall be guided by the best evidence they may be able to obtain of established local usage, if there be any applicable to the case, or, if not, by general principles of equity and justice.
5. Encroachments on beds of navigable rivers and other obstructions. - Nothing in this Regulation shall be construed to justify any encroachments by individuals on the beds or channels of navigable rivers, or to prevent Zila [* * *] Magistrates or any other officers of [the Government] who may be duly empowered for that purpose from removing obstacles which appear to interfere with the safe and customary navigation of such rivers, or which shall in any respects obstruct the passage of boats by tracking on the banks of such rivers, or otherwise.


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newsR > In the News > Patna Facts and News Updates
Metropolis in :Bihar, India
Patna ▸ Facts ▸ Comments ▸ News ▸ Videos
Patna, also known as Pataliputra is the capital and largest city of the state of Bihar in India. Patna is the second-largest city in Eastern India after Kolkata. It had an estimated city population of 1.68 million in 2011, making it the 19th largest city in India. With over 2 million people, its urban agglomeration is the 18th largest in India. Patna also serves as the seat of Patna High Court.
Returning from Patna court, Rahul Gandhi drops in at restaurant for a meal
Sources said Rahul Gandhi, who stepped down as Congress president recently taking moral responsibility for the debacle in Lok Sabha polls, ordered dosa along with coffee which he enjoyed. Several..
IndiaTimes - Published 1 week ago
Rahul Gandhi feasts on dosa after Patna hearing
Gandhi visited a restaurant in Maurya Lok Place and feasted on dosa for lunch before departing for the Patna Airport
DNA - Published 1 week ago
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Northrop Grumman to operate man-hunting radar system for manned and unmanned aircraft operations in Afghanistan
REDSTONE ARSENAL, Ala., 22 Dec. 2013. Airborne radar experts at the Northrop Grumman Corp. Electronic Systems segment in Linthicum, Md., will continue to operate and support a system designed to detect and follow people traveling on foot, as well as moving land vehicles, under terms of a $65.3 million contract modification.
Northrop Grumman selected to operate man-hunting radar system for manned and unmanned aircraft operations in Afghanistan
Northrop Grumman will do the work on the U.S. Army's Vehicle and Dismount Exploitation Radar (VADER) system. Awarding the contract were officials of the Army Contracting Command at Redstone Arsenal, Ala. The VADER man-hunting radar is for manned aircraft and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
The contract calls for Northrop Grumman operate and sustain the VADER system now deployed in theater. The Army has been operating three VADER man-hunting radar systems -- two in Afghanistan and one in the U.S.
VADER can be operated from manned fixed-wing aircraft such as the twin-engine Britten-Norman Islander, on which the company flight-tested VADER in 2008, as well as on the General Atomics MQ-1C Grey Eagle UAV.
VADER is designed to track vehicles and foot traffic over a wide area from UAVs and manned aircraft, and provide Army ground commanders with real-time ground moving target indicator (GMTI) data and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery.
A Tactical Common Data Link (TCDL) transmits VADER data to an exploitation ground station with the remote radar control, mission planning, and exploitation equipment.
Northrop Grumman initially won the VADER development contract in 2006. The project has sponsorship from Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Office (JIEDDO), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and the Defense Microelectronics Activity (DMEA), as well as from the Army Intelligence and Information Warfare Directorate.
UAV Navigation tests UAV autopilot with Roke miniature radar altimeter
Sierra Nevada completes second sense-and-avoid radar sensor flight demonstration
Navy readies future deployment of long-range maritime patrol UAVs with infrastructure on east and west coasts
VADER's exploitation suite includes the DARPA NetTrack tool for persistent reconnaissance, surveillance, tracking, and targeting of evasive vehicles and people moving on foot in cluttered environments.
The system operates in two modes: as a synthetic aperture radar for high-resolution still images, and as a real-time ground moving target indicator for detecting and tracking moving targets-particularly moving vehicles and humans on foot.
The overall idea of the VADER system is to detect teams planting improvised explosive devices (IEDs) to destroy or damage U.S. military vehicles and personnel. VADER also has been demonstrated to track animals and boats.
The VADER's ground moving target indicators detect the Doppler shift that moving objects produce in radar return signals, Northrop Grumman officials say. Doppler shift is a change in the frequency of the radar return caused by the motion of the target. Because there is no shift caused by stationary objects, the shift reveals moving objects.
VADER transmits processed signals from the aircraft to ground stations, where operators can view still, high-contrast, black-and-white synthetic aperture radar images, or moving targets displayed as dots on a map.
On the current contract Northrop Grumman will do the work in Linthicum Heights, Md., Hagerstown, Md., and Afghanistan, and should be finished by the end of 2014.
For more information contact Northrop Grumman Electronic Systems online at www.es.northropgrumman.com, or the Army Contracting Command at www.army.mil/ACC.


Dr. Clapper cares for my primary dental care needs.
I have been using Dr. Clapper's services for the past 15 years and have been very pleased. He's very technically oriented and knows exactly what he is doing. He's just a genuinely nice guy. I highly recommend him to others.
Dr. Michael Clapper is my dentist.
I switched to Dr. Clapper on a recommendation. He's very personable and his staff is quite good and friendly. Everything is done quickly and professionally. If you have to go to a dentist, you have to go to a dentist. I will go back to him.


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Ammo Rifle
Hunting with a Classic — the .308 Winchester
The .308 Winchester is still a winner.
March 20, 2020 By Eric R. Poole
As a young man, I met disappoint after watching the 1978 war drama "The Deer Hunter," starring Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken and John Savage. I enthusiastically picked up a copy on VHS after mining through a discount bin of used video tapes. I flipped over the box to read the summary and was impressed by the picture of De Niro carrying a Remington 700 BDL — a left-hand model mind you. Filled with intrigue, I thought I had spent my hard-earned dollars on an Academy Award-winning film about an epic whitetail adventure. Oh, how wrong was I.
I'm often distracted from the tried-and-true while testing new introductions such as rifles chambered in 6.5 Creedmoor and .300 PRC, but I've found my way back to the .308 Winchester. It's a versatile cartridge whose case has been used as the parent for the .243 Winchester, 7mm-08 Remington, .260 Rem., 6.5 Creedmoor and .338 Federal, among others. After 35 years of shooting, my conclusion is if you could only own rifles in one caliber, a strong argument can be made for the .308 given modern bullet technology.
I'm on a lifelong quest to try and take a deer in all 50 states, a Grand Slam I invented for myself. As I continued this pursuit in Kansas last fall, I was reminded why I love the .308.
Last year, I hunted a lot with a selection of new Savage rifles, including a 110 Lightweight Storm topped with a Bushnell Nitro 3-12x44mm. The stainless action and adjustable stock are impervious to weather, affordable and as versatile as the .308. In Kansas, I hiked across a cut, slushy corn field to my stand at the corner and toughed out a bone-chilling drop in temperature for three days. One morning, before the sun crested the trees, I saw antlers begin to creep out. I didn't trust my eyes and pulled up a pair of binos to accurately identify the buck. I started counting to myself, one, two, four, six, eight … until I couldn't believe I was still trying to count his points. He was a shooter. I thought to myself, You're wasting time! He is not going to stand there forever! With his head turned away, I quickly picked up the Savage, zoomed up to 6X and shot a 165-grain Barnes TSX (loaded by Federal Premium) into his shoulder — or so I thought. It sounded like a good thwack, but he turned and dove behind a tall pine tree. In that same moment, a group of deer took off up and over a hill into the trees. I imagined my buck was among them. Seeds of doubt around my shot grew. Did I get him?
Minutes later, I was horrified to only find a small drop of blood where he'd been hit. For more than an hour, the outfitter and I hiked and retraced each set of tracks until we couldn't. Deciding to take a break and leave to fetch another searcher, we caught a whiff of the buck's scent and saw him piled up in a thorn bush just under a pine tree. He had been just a few feet from where was shot. Relief and excitement ensued.
He was a non-typical eight with a drop tine and a total of 16 measurable points — plus trash. It's the most character I've ever found in a deer, especially one taken by a single shot. This hunt serves to remind me that the .308 Winchester is still a capable cartridge, especially now with improved bullet technology. The adventure contained all of the drama I had hoped to watch in "The Deer Hunter," one worthy of an award.
Colt Model 1861 Special Musket: What's Its Value?
Self-Defense Handgun and Ammo Options for People With Dexterity and Strength Issues
Jeremy Stafford
Garmin Tactix 7 Pro Ballistic Solar-Powered GPS Smartwatch: First Look


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Race, Slavery, and Sainthood in the Early Modern Ottoman World: Some Perspectives
On June 17, 2018 June 22, 2018 By JonathanIn Arabic, Culture, East & West, History, Islam, Ottoman
Kadı Sünbül 'Ali, as depicted in a c. 1620 Ottoman book of costumes for Western European use, The Habits of the Grand Seignor's Court, British Museum 1928,0323,0.46.8
Among the circles on Twitter that I follow- and occasionally participate in- in recent weeks the issue of the relationship between 'the Enlightenment' and modern notions and practices of racism has emerged as a popular and contentious topic. Now, while I have my own thoughts and theories about the Western European Enlightenment (which was as you can guess from my use of quotation marks a much more complicated affair than either its boosters or detractors tend to make out), what I would like to address here is the question of how race was perceived in a pre-modern, pre-Enlightenment context, specifically, within the Ottoman Empire at a particular time (and among certain groups, not necessarily all, given the sheer diversity of the empire). As such, the example I give here doesn't necessarily prove anything one way or another about whether or not the Enlightenment 'invented' racism or racialized slavery. Rather, what I hope my comments here demonstrate is the complicated ways in which racial, or racial-like, categories, ethnic difference, and practices of slavery (all of which certainly intersected long before the Enlightenment to be sure) interacted. It does not make sense, ultimately, to say that early modern Ottomans were racist, or, for that matter, that they weren't, or, in terms of slavery, that Ottoman slavery was totally different from slavery in the Americas, or that it was very similar: the reality is, as we historians are (obnoxiously to some!) fond of saying, complicated, and while our modern categories (themselves certainly shaped by, among other things, the Enlightenment(s)) are not totally foreign to early modern Ottoman (or any other) worlds, they must be applied with care if they are to be applied at all. Likewise, while we can often find parallels- unsurprisingly- between Ottoman practices and attitudes and those developing in contemporary Western Europe and the Americas, we ought to be equally sensitive to the differences and divergences.
I've taken a single late 17th century encounter, recorded by 'Abd al-Ghanī al-Nābulusī and translated below along with my commentary, as my main point of departure, a story which I think illustrates well these complexities of racial origin, slavery, and the social limitations and possibilities contained within Ottoman practices of race and slavery, all oriented within a concern for sainthood (a category early modern Ottomans of all confessional varieties would have recognized to some degree or another, incidentally). There are a lot of ways in which we might explore race and slavery in the Ottoman lands: in thinking about race and ethnicity, for instance, we might want to consider the genealogy of ideas about phenotype and human geographical origin in the wider Islamic sphere, a genealogy that we could well trace back to the heritages of the ancient world. In terms of slavery, we might consider the various mechanisms whereby slaves were brought to market in Ottoman cities, the different ways that slaves from different places were perceived and employed, or the interaction of legal norms governing slavery, lived practice, and differing attitudes based on skin color or gender or other characteristics.
Historians have not tackled these issues to the degree that they deserve; Ottoman slavery, while the subject of a handful of monographs and edited volumes, remains poorly understood and overly polemicized. On the question of race and racial identity and prejudice, perhaps the best treatment has come from Baki Tezcan in his article 'Dispelling the Darkness: The politics of 'race' in the early seventeenth century Ottoman Empire in the light of the life and work of Mullah Ali'.' [1] Mullah 'Ali, who is almost certainly the 'kadı' pictured above, was an Ottoman scholar and jurist of African origin who rose to extreme prominence in the 'ilmiyye hierarchy, coming close to claiming the highest rank in the scholarly system, that of shaykh al-Islam, the personal patronage-based politics of the Ottoman elite intervening. While he was subject to some degree of insult and prejudice due to the color of his skin- his detractors drawing upon a venerable genealogy of notions within the Islamic world about the supposed inferiority of Africans- Tezcan argues that these insults and prejudice (which Mullah 'Ali, also following a long genealogy within Islam, combated in writing) were mostly strategic, his opponents not being motivated by racial prejudice but instead deploying it because it was available. This suggests that something like 'racism' was culturally available to Ottomans, but with the stress on 'available': it was not systematic in any meaningful sense, and it need not bar a well-connected scholar with black skin from rising to the heights of power. That said, Mullah 'Ali's story primarily concerns the situation of the rarefied elite of the Ottoman world. What of race and slavery at the level of more ordinary people?
The story that I'd like to focus on in order to approach some aspects of slavery and race at the non-elite level [2] is one that I've shared before, but for a different purpose: The Hermit of Ya'bad and His Marvelous Coffee and Good Counsel. There is a great deal going on this little story, with insights about matters from how sacred space was performed in the Ottoman world to the role of coffee culture and its penetration even into the rural Palestinian countryside. But here we will focus on Shaykh Zā'id – the subject of the account – and his relationships with others. We begin with 'Abd al-Ghanī's initial encounter, during his passage through northern Palestine during the late 17th century:
And it reached us in that village [of Ya'bad] that there was close by a black [freed] slave from among the divinely drawn (majādhīb) lovers of God, whose name was Shaykh Zā'id, in a cave there at the foot of a small mountain. And it was reported to us that the cave used to not be there, but one day he was present on the mountain and the cave appeared for him. So we went to visit him, and we entered into his cave. It is a small cave, with lots of niches all around the walls, none of which open to the outside. And he was inside sitting on the ground, and he had a small mortar made of wood with which he ground coffee beans, and a small iron coffee roaster. No one who visited him leaves without him giving them coffee to drink. And he makes the coffee from anything that he has on hand, from wheat, barley, from scraps [of coffee?], and chickpeas—but no one who visits him drinks it without it being excellent coffee! And it was related to us that if he needs firewood, he will, with little effort, pluck out a great tree and break it down with his own hand, bring the wood back, and place it in his cave.
Much of this first half of the story need not concern us here, but two things stand out: first, note that Shaykh Zā'id is introduced as a black slave, and that I have added 'freed' in brackets, as it is not in the original. 'Black' and 'slave,' while they did not necessarily go together in the Ottoman imagination, elite and ordinary, tended not to be too far apart conceptually. We know from other sources that many enslaved Africans, perhaps in the millions, were sold in the Ottoman lands, with Cairo as the primary point of sale, and that a sort of racial or, better, ethnic hierarchy existed in terms of work expectations. [3] Black slaves tended to used for manual labor jobs, often in agricultural settings- this was, as we will see, precisely the case for Shaykh Zā'id. So far we can see clear parallels with practices in the Americas and emerging attitudes among Western Europeans- but then we come to Shaykh Zā'id's status when 'Abd al-Ghanī met him. He had become a majdhūb, 'a divinely drawn one,' and had been recognized as such by others, allowing him to win his freedom and to occupy a new space within the rural economy of Ya'bad. We might be tempted to attribute his marginality- dwelling in a cave in the woods outside of the village- to his status as a black former slave, but I think it is more accurate to see this as an expression of his sainthood. Many majdhūb saints elsewhere of diverse backgrounds inhabited similar spaces; indeed, in the deep history of sainthood in Palestine and elsewhere we can think of many holy men and women dwelling in places at once outside of settled life but still proximate.
As for the rest of Shaykh Zā'id's saintly 'profile' or repertoire, it does not seem to really have much to do with his ethnic origin or skin color: his practice of hospitality (which, we are given to understand by 'Abd al-Ghanī's account, was divinely aided) drove at a central value across not just the Arab provinces but the whole of the empire and indeed the Islamic world as a whole. Not only that, but in making and serving coffee he was very much 'up to date,' a reminder that the social innovations of early modernity such as 'coffee culture' could be found even in rural villages such as Ya'bad, and served as a linkage between an urbane man of culture such as 'Abd al-Ghanī and those he encountered in his travels. It might not be too much of stretch to think of Shaykh Zā'id's cave as a sort of sanctified coffeehouse, on the model- almost certainly coincidentally- of the holy coffeehouse and shrine of the majdhūb of Aleppo Shaykh Arslan. Finally, it is possible, I think, that the saint's reputation for super-strength owed something to his African origins: as in Western Europe, black men and women both were reputed to have exceptional bodily strength, the bodily and physical being 'coded' as predominant in them. Whether or not this reputation arose out of such stereotyping, it was assimilated to his identity as a saint, and, in 'Abd al-Ghanī's telling, tied in to his practice of hospitality.
Let us continue 'Abd al-Ghanī's account:
And when we entered we greeted him, and he returned the greeting. He is a black freed slave who prefers silence and solitude; Shaykh Muṣlaḥ of the aforementioned village had told us that he used to be the slave of some of the people of that village, and he used to shepherd animals for them. But when this divine attraction (al-jadhb) occurred in him, he abandoned shepherding, and his master manumitted him. He used to return at times the village after the death of his former master, but then he settled in this cave and the people began paying visits to him in it. People from every place seek him out, believe in him, seek blessing from his words, and ask advice from him about their affairs. I asked him about the condition of my brothers and of the group of people traveling with me to Jerusalem, and he replied: 'They are in grace and good through you.' And he mentioned to us many words in which were good tidings to us and favorable end for our goal, and peace and safety.
And when we went in to visit him there was with us a young divinely attracted man from among the divinely attracted folk of Damascus, whom we have mentioned previously. When that divinely attracted one went in to him and spoke with him, he laughed greatly. He then said that he was tired, so we recited the Fātiḥa, paid our regards, and departed. [4]
This half of the story brings our central focus into sharp relief, and also raises questions we cannot fully answer. 'Abd al-Ghanī provides, in no doubt condensed form, the saint's biography as it had been related to him by a villager- though, we should keep in mind, 'Abd al-Ghanī's retelling was done through the lens of his own ideas about sainthood, which might not have exactly converged with those of the people of Ya'bad. That said, there was clear overlap, even in the use of the categories of jadhb and majdhūb- but we stray somewhat from our topic. We learn in this account that Shaykh Zā'id, like many slaves of African origin, had formerly been employed in shepherding, which by itself tells us that the presence of black slaves in rural Palestine was not probably not unusual. There are many things that remain unknown to us: how did Shaykh Zā'id's former master acquire him? Where? Was Zā'id a Muslim when he came to Ya'bad, or did he convert later? How did Zā'id come to know about categories and practices of sainthood- or should we suppose that villagers were projecting their own assumptions upon his new behavior? We get the sense that both Zā'id and the villagers interpreted his changed lifestyle as being 'real' and necessary, the result of divine attraction- and that his master, in recognizing this new status, manumitted him. This suggests that despite being both a slave employed in manual labor and being black, the villagers of Ya'bad, as well as 'Abd al-Ghanī and presumably his intended audience, did not see those things as impediments to becoming a saint. Furthermore, Zā'id's 'entry' into sainthood entailed his manumission and a change in his relationship to his master and to the villagers.
Shaykh Zā'id seems to have kept up his relationship with his master- a very common situation in Islamic slavery and slavery the world over, for that matter. Yet he also seems to have been gradually moving himself into his 'own' space and set of relationships, predicated upon his new liberated identity as a saint. With his former master's death he fully entered into this new arrangement of space and relationship: the villagers, who continued to venerate him, now came to him instead of he to them. His former identity as a slave was not totally erased, since he continued to be remembered as a former slave, and even in 'Abd al-Ghanī's account his blackness and his identity as a (former) slave was foregrounded. But it does seem safe to say that in his new, much more autonomous space, Shaykh Zā'id was no longer defined by his blackness and his former servility. It was his experience of jadhb, his practices of sainthood, and his reputation for miraculous powers that mattered now and which shaped his relationships with others. The remainder of the account bears this out, 'Abd al-Ghanī and his companions' interactions with the shaykh not differing from interactions with other living saints, regardless of skin hue.
Now, in thinking about the wider implications of this story, it is of course true that it primarily tells us about the attitudes of 'Abd al-Ghanī and his Palestinian villager interlocutors. Did 'Abd al-Ghanī or the inhabitants of Ya'bad 'see race'? Yes and no: certainly Shaykh Zā'id was seen as black, his blackness closely tied to his former status as a slave, a status that was never entirely 'former' in fact but stayed with him to some degree. Yet at the same time, even if this blackness and servility were seen as central to his identity, they did not define who Shaykh Zā'id was to 'Abd al-Ghanī, the villagers, or other devotees who came to visit the saint. It was the former shepherd's reputation as a Friend of God that really 'mattered' socially, and which had come to structure his place in the world of rural Palestine. Perhaps there were villagers who balked at the idea of a black slave shepherd becoming a powerful Friend of God- but if there were, their voices have vanished, and perhaps by 'Abd al-Ghanī's time any such concerns had indeed passed away.
How much can this story tell us about other places in the Ottoman world? It is noteworthy that 'Abd al-Ghanī feels no need to explain things further to his audience, an audience which included literate individuals across the Ottoman lands, in the Arab provinces, in Anatolia, in Rumelia, even in the Kurdish marches. Perhaps someone in that audience might have been bothered by the idea of a black slave becoming a Friend of God- but such an objection seems doubtful to me. There was, after all, precedent for such things, going all the way back to the time of Muhammad and the Companions- and any educated Ottoman Muslim would have been familiar with the story of Bilāl ibn Rabāḥ (picture below), a freed slave and, according to Sunni tradition, the first one to give the call to prayer.
In conclusion, as I noted above, it is hard to fit Ottoman attitudes- and indeed wider Islamic ones- neatly into the categories with which we are used on the questions of race and slavery. Shaykh Zā'id's story is not meant to be a condemnation of slavery, to be sure- but it does point to the fact that slavery, like skin color, need not be an absolute social fact foreclosing everything else. Likewise, while it seems inaccurate to say that Ottomans did not see skin color- they clearly did- or that they did not sometimes attach attitudes we might identify as 'racist' to ethnic difference or varieties of skin color, it is also clear from examples like Shaykh Zā'id or Mullah 'Ali that these attitudes had their limits, and that a man (or perhaps woman, though here we are on different terrain) could pass from being primarily seen as a manual laborer marked by his black skin and servility to being a member of the elite, either political or spiritual. Their cases are to be sure exceptions, but the fact that they were exceptions that could be reproduced and that made sense socially is important and reinforces further the complicated and contingent reality of slavery and ethnic difference in the Ottoman world and both its distance and closeness to the categories and histories we in the modern West are more familiar with.
Bilāl as depicted in a copy of the
Siyar-i Nabî, by Mustafa Darir, Istanbul, c. 1594–1595. Topkapı Museum, Istanbul, vol. 6, fol. 75–304-a
[1] Baki Tezcan, 'Dispelling the Darkness: The politics of 'race' in the early seventeenth century Ottoman Empire in the light of the life and work of Mullah Ali'in, Identity and Identity Formation in the Ottoman World: A Volume of Essays in Honor of Norman Itzkowitz, ed. by Baki. Tezcan, Karl K. Barbir (Madison: Center for Turkish Studies at the University of Wisconsin, 2007).
[2] Of course 'Abd al-Ghanī was a member of the elite, albeit in a different way from Mollah 'Ali. Nonetheless, as I think this story indicates, he moved around a great deal in decidedly non-elite circles, his work and life in fact destabilizing many of the ways we might divide Ottoman society into 'elite' and 'non-elite' levels. That said, his perspective cannot be imagined to be exactly the same as, say, a Palestinian peasant, and we must keep in mind his work of literary crafting, writerly strategies, and so forth.
[3] On Ottoman slavery broadly, see for instance Madeline Zilfi, Women and Slavery in the Late Ottoman Empire: The Design of Difference, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); Géza Dávid and Pál Fodor, Ransom Slavery along the Ottoman Borders: Early Fifteenth-Early Eighteenth Centuries (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2007).
[4] 'Abd al-Ghanī al-Nābulusī, al-Ḥaḍrah al-unsīya fī al-riḥlah al-Qudsīyah (Beirut: al-Maṣādir, 1990), 66-7.
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'Abd al-Ghani al-NabulusiAfrican HistoryEarly Modern HistoryHistory of SainthoodHistory of SlaveryIslamic HistoryOttoman HistoryOttoman SlaveryPalestineRace and Slavery
A Magnificent Eighteenth Century Ottoman Book-Cover
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text:
Q: jQuery-Cycle: border-radius property not acting as expected in Chrome 11 Im using jQuery-cycle to power one of my slideshow and a border-radius property applied to the container div is not working as expected: The "View Content" slide has rounded corners, the other slides dont have any.
#carousel  {-webkit-border-radius: 15px; -moz-border-radius: 15px; border-radius: 15px;}

My cycle init code:
$('#carousel').cycle( {
        speed: 400,
        startingSlide: 1,
        speedIn:null,
        speedOut:null,
        cleartype: false,
        fit:1,
        width:980,
        delay: 0,
        timeout:0,
        fx: 'scrollHorz',
        easing: 'swing',
        easeIn:null,
        easeOut:null,
        prev: '#left',
        next: '#right',
        pager: '#pager',
        pagerAnchorBuilder: function ( idx, slide ) {
        return('0'+slide.id+' / 07');
        },
        updateActivePagerLink: function(pager, activeIndex) {
                if(activeIndex==0){
                $('#navigation').hide();
                $('#bottombar').css({'margin-top':'22px'});
                }

                else if(activeIndex==1){
                $('#left').hide(); $('#right').show();
                $('#bottombar').css({'margin-top':'540px'});
                }

                else if(activeIndex==7){
                $('#left').show(); $('#right').hide();
                $('#bottombar').css({'margin-top':'540px'});
                }
                else
                {
                    $('#right').show();$('#left').show();
                    $('#bottombar').css({'margin-top':'540px'});
                }               $('#pager').find('span:eq('+activeIndex+')').addClass('activeSpan').siblings().removeClass('activeSpan');
                            }

});

Demo: http://rjwcollective.com/equinox/brochure/

A: You are actually getting round corners on your #carousel div (You can test this by adding a red border on #carousel). The reason you don't see it is because the images are absolutely positioned and do not have rounded corners.
If you want to show the rounded corners, you add this rule to your stylesheet:
.carousel_cont {
  padding: 15px 0px;
}


text:
var assert = require('assert');
var connect = require('connect');
var http = require('http');
var wwwhisper = require('../lib/connect-wwwhisper');

suite('connect-wwwhisper', function() {
  var WWWHISPER_PORT = 10000;
  var WWWHISPER_URL = 'http://localhost:' + WWWHISPER_PORT;
  var TEST_USER = 'foo@example.com';
  var appServer;
  var authServer;
  var authCallCount = 0;
  var authHandler;
  var appHandler;

  function wwwhisperCalled() {
    return authCallCount > 0;
  }

  function grant(req, res) {
    authCallCount += 1;
    res.writeHead(200, { User : TEST_USER });
    res.end();
  }

  function requestLogin(req, res) {
    authCallCount += 1;
    res.writeHead(401);
    res.end('Login required');
  }

  function deny(req, res) {
    authCallCount += 1;
    res.writeHead(403);
    res.end('Not authorized');
  }

  function openLocationGrant(req, res) {
    authCallCount += 1;
    res.writeHead(200);
    res.end();
  }

  var TEST_HTML_BODY = 'Hello World';
  function htmlDoc(req, res) {
    res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/html'});
    res.end(TEST_HTML_BODY);
  }

  function gzipedHtmlDoc(req, res) {
    res.writeHead(200, {
      'Content-Type': 'text/html',
      'Content-Encoding': 'gzip'
    });
    res.end(TEST_HTML_BODY);
  }

  function authQuery(path) {
    return '/wwwhisper/auth/api/is-authorized/?path=' + path;
  }

  /**
   * Wraps a request to provide synchronous access to a response body
   * and error (ala 'requests' module
   * https://github.com/mikeal/request).
   */
  function request(url, callback) {
    var req = http.request(url, function(response) {
      response.body = '';
      response.error = false;
      response.on('data', function(chunk) {
        response.body += chunk;
      });
      response.on('end', function() {
        callback(response);
      });
      response.on('error', function() {
        callback(response);
        response.error = true;
      });
    });
    req.end();
  }

  function setupAppServer(injectLogoutIframe) {
    var app = connect()
      .use(wwwhisper(injectLogoutIframe))
      .use(function(req, res){
        appHandler(req, res);
      });
    appServer = http.createServer(app).listen(9999);
  }

  function setupAuthServer() {
    var authApp = connect()
      .use(function(req, res) {
        authHandler(req, res);
      });
    authServer = http.createServer(authApp).listen(WWWHISPER_PORT);
  }

  setup(function() {
    process.env.WWWHISPER_URL = WWWHISPER_URL;
    authCallCount = 0;
    setupAppServer();
    setupAuthServer();
    authHandler = grant;
    appHandler = htmlDoc;
  });

  teardown(function() {
    appServer.close();
    if (authServer !== null) {
      authServer.close();
    }
  });

  test('WWWHISPER_URL required', function() {
    delete process.env.WWWHISPER_URL;
    assert.throws(wwwhisper,
                  function(err) {
                    return ((err instanceof Error) &&
                            /WWWHISPER_URL nor WWWHISPER_DISABLE/.test(err));
                  });
  });

  test('disable wwwhisper', function(done) {
    delete process.env.WWWHISPER_URL;
    process.env.WWWHISPER_DISABLE = '1';
    appServer.close();
    setupAppServer();
    request('http://localhost:9999', function(response) {
      assert(!wwwhisperCalled());
      assert.equal(response.error, false);
      assert.equal(response.statusCode, 200);
      assert(response.body.indexOf('Hello World') > -1);
      done();
    });
  });

  test('request allowed', function(done) {
    var path = '/foo/bar';
    authHandler = function(req, res) {
      assert.equal(req.url, authQuery(path));
      grant(req, res);
    };
    appHandler = function(req, res) {
      assert.equal(req.remoteUser, TEST_USER);
      htmlDoc(req, res);
    };

    request('http://localhost:9999' + path, function(response) {
      assert(wwwhisperCalled());
      assert.equal(response.error, false);
      assert.equal(response.statusCode, 200);
      assert.equal(response.headers['user'], TEST_USER);
      assert(response.body.indexOf('Hello World') >= 0);
      done();
    });
  });

  test('open location request allowed', function(done) {
    var path = '/';
    authHandler = function(req, res) {
      assert.equal(req.url, authQuery(path));
      openLocationGrant(req, res);
    };

    appHandler = function(req, res) {
      assert.equal(req.remoteUser, undefined);
      htmlDoc(req, res);
    };

    request('http://localhost:9999' + path, function(response) {
      assert(wwwhisperCalled());
      assert.equal(response.error, false);
      assert.equal(response.statusCode, 200);
      assert.equal(response.headers['user'], undefined);
      assert(response.body.indexOf('Hello World') >= 0);
      done();
    });
  });

  test('login required', function(done) {
    authHandler = requestLogin;
    appHandler = function() {
      // Request should not be passed to the app.
      assert(false);
    };

    request('http://localhost:9999/foo/bar', function(response) {
      assert(wwwhisperCalled());
      assert.equal(response.error, false);
      assert.equal(response.statusCode, 401);
      assert.equal(response.headers['user'], undefined);
      assert(response.body.indexOf('Login required') >= 0);
      done();
    });
  });

  test('request denied', function(done) {
    authHandler = deny;
    appHandler = function() {
      assert(false);
    };

    request('http://localhost:9999/foo/bar', function(response) {
      assert(wwwhisperCalled());
      assert.equal(response.error, false);
      assert.equal(response.statusCode, 403);
      assert.equal(response.headers['user'], undefined);
      assert(response.body.indexOf('Not authorized') >= 0);
      done();
    });
  });

  test('redirect passed from wwwhisper to client', function(done) {
    authHandler = function(req, res) {
      res.writeHead(302, {
        'location': 'https://localhost:9999/foo/bar',
      });
      res.end();
    };
    appHandler = function() {
      assert(false);
    };

    request('http://localhost:9999/foo/bar', function(response) {
      assert.equal(response.error, false);
      assert.equal(response.statusCode, 302);
      assert.equal(response.headers['location'],
                   'https://localhost:9999/foo/bar');
      done();
    });
  });

  test('iframe injected to html response', function(done) {
    authHandler = grant;
    appHandler = htmlDoc;

    request('http://localhost:9999/foo/bar', function(response) {
      assert(wwwhisperCalled());
      assert.equal(response.error, false);
      assert.equal(response.statusCode, 200);
      assert(response.body.indexOf('Hello World') >= 0);
      assert(response.body.search(/

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


TV Noise 108 (seamless loop): TV noise and horizontal lines.
4k00:05TV noise with horizontal lines roll and flicker (Loop).
4k00:05TV Noise 0108: TV snow with vertical roll (Loop).
hd00:05Rolling TV snow flickers and shifts (Loop).
4k00:15TV Noise 0746: Colorful TV Noise and TV Static fill the screen (Loop).
4k00:15Colorful TV Noise and TV Static fill the screen (Loop).


text:
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Pastors and Porn: A Struggle for the Church
by Ted Shimer | April 3, 2021
According to studies, 64 percent of Christian men admit to grappling with porn addiction. With only seven percent of churches offering solutions for their congregation to break free from porn, we want to help churches do more. With the deep impact porn has on relationships and spiritual growth and the staggering number of people who struggle with it, the church has an amazing opportunity to offer biblically-based, gospel-centered and scientifically-informed solutions that result in restoration, discipleship, and healing.
Porn addiction is a difficult topic to navigate. With few outward "symptoms," it's easy to hide, and with so many shame-inducing consequences, it's tempting to stay hidden. It's not surprising that churches have a hard time addressing the rampant issue of porn, and here are a few reasons why:
Reason #1: 50% of Pastors Are Struggling With Porn Themselves
Multiple studies showed that half of pastors are addicted to porn. One pastor said, "I wanted to get help and open up, but I was afraid. I was so afraid of how it would make me look. Here I am, a pastor of this growing, new church, and I'm constantly watching porn?" Admitting shortcomings, confessing hypocrisy, risking embarrassment and shame— all of these obstacles stand in the way of any church members or pastors addicted to porn. And if we can't be honest about our own struggle with porn, how can we lead others down this path?
Reason #2: Many Churches Have a Punishment Culture in Place
For many pastors with a porn addiction, coming clean means losing their job. Most churches have a punitive culture in place—if a pastor struggles with porn, they'll be asked to resign or be publicly shamed. With the threat of losing a job on the table, many pastors feel forced to live a double life, to compartmentalize their porn use and their ministry. There's no freedom to repent. So pastors stay in the shadows; they privately confess to God; they tell themselves they have to work on this thing alone. But no one gets free by themselves. And so the cycle continues.
Reason #3: Many Pastors Don't Realize the Severity of the Porn Problem
While some pastors struggle with porn themselves, others don't recognize it as a significant problem amongst their people. The damage porn causes is beneath the surface, and because so few people talk about it, it's tempting to ignore the problem altogether. Maybe they've tried to launch a recovery group and no one has shown up. Maybe they've asked questions, and no one has admitted a problem. Or maybe their congregation has many more needs that demand their attention and resources.
Reason #4: Recovery From Porn Addiction is Hard Work
Most pastors feel ill-equipped to walk with people on the road to recovery. As a Christian community, we don't openly talk about porn addiction. There is a lot of secrecy and hiding. Most Christian leaders don't know what tools and resources are available to help people find freedom. Recovery is also a long road, and it involves a lot more than a quick confession or a once-a-week Bible study. Finding and providing helpful resources can be difficult and time-consuming.
Reason #5: Pornography and Shame
Pornography is uncomfortable to talk about, especially in a church setting. The recovery process can be over-simplified as confession and repentance. Most church members and pastors addicted to porn need more than that. When the problem is reduced to "repent and confess your sins," those that need more help along the way feel embarrassed and hopeless. When churches offer recovery groups and no one shows up, this isn't because no one is struggling with porn. It's because people are afraid to admit they need help and they're afraid they'll be the only ones that join the group! Dr. Ted Roberts, a counselor with over 30 years of experience helping Christians break free from sexual sin, says that fewer than 10 percent of Christian men struggling with a porn or sex addiction seek out meaningful help. This has everything to do with shame.
How Churches Can Treat Porn Addiction
Establishing a Restorative Culture
For pastors addicted to porn to feel free to repent, we encourage churches to adopt what we call a restorative policy—as long as you haven't done anything illegal or with another person and as long as you are committed to recovery, you can get help for your porn struggle without the fear of punishment. The goal of church discipline is restoration. This is in line with the spirit of Galatians 6:1, "Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness."
Opening a Path to Porn Addiction Recovery
While each case is different and a specific position can't always be maintained, each leadership team must determine a restoration plan that invites staff to confess and get help. Remember, half of our pastors are addicted to porn. Rather than continuing to shame and perpetuate the issue, a restorative culture allows people to get help. It empowers leaders to live up to biblical standards of leadership and acknowledges that we are all on a journey towards healing and redemption. If leaders don't repent of the sin of pornography, how can we expect the members to confess?
Equipping Our People to Help Others Find Freedom
Recovery is only for people with problems — equipping is for everyone. When a church leader says, "This is such a pervasive issue, we need more people equipped to help others find freedom," it encourages everyone to attend the training. The training itself further de-shames the topic as people learn about the addictive and destructive nature of porn, as well as the roots that drive an addiction. It gives people hope that freedom is possible. Our Freedom Fight 30 Day Challenge is free and simple content that your church can offer in a five-week equipping class.
Porn's Far-Reaching Effects
The reality is that staying in the shadows costs you and your church more than you think. It's keeping your people from engaging and serving whole-heartedly. Porn is causing breakdowns in marriages and parenting relationships. Porn is wreaking havoc on spiritual health and connection with God. Hebrews 12:1 says, "Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us." Pastors addicted to porn can't run their race to freedom. And they can't lead their people into freedom, either.
Finding Spiritual Freedom From Porn
Pastors addicted to porn get to pave the way for their congregations. Honesty will allow others to repent as well. It will start to break down the shame and darkness that surrounds the topic of pornography. It will help liberate the church from the power of porn. After one pastor with a porn addiction found freedom himself he shared, "I confessed my struggle with pornography to the church. I asked their forgiveness for failing them as a leader. More importantly, I asked for their help in starting a ministry for men and women who struggled in a similar way." Now, this church has a thriving porn addiction recovery program and people are finding freedom.
Leading in God's Truth
1 Timothy 1:5 says, "The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith." When we struggle with porn, the enemy robs us of our ability to live out what God has called us to—a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith. God uses the process of freeing us from porn to heal us and to make us more like Him. Leaders in the church pave the way for people to find transformation and wholeness. This process begins with you.
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Published: April 3, 2021 | Spiritual Health
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Designed primarily for live concerts and stage shows where backing tracks are used for orchestration, vocals and sound effects, SW8 employs an adjustable gate to detect a machine malfunction and automatically switch to a second 'backup' machine to deliver a seamless performance. One merely records a steady state signal on a track and feeds it to the SW8. Should the signal drop, the SW8 will automatically switch to the B system and 'sound' an alarm. Switching can also be performed manually via the front panel A~B switch, a rear access latching switch or by using the optional Radial JR2 footswitch. For larger systems, multiple SW8s may be linked together to create 16, 24 or 32 track systems.
Housed in a heavy duty 14-gauge steel 19″ enclosure, the Radial SW8 is equipped with choice of 25-pin D-sub or ¼" TRS connector inputs with both XLR and D-Sub outputs. The front panel XLRs produce a balanced DI mic level to feed a snake system and are transformer isolated to eliminate hum and buzz caused by ground loops. The rear panel D-Sub provides direct balanced line level connectivity and the transformer isolated outputs may be internally re-patched to send the mic level signal to the 25 pin D-sub output if needed. To further suppress switching noise, a series of internal filters help eliminate DC offset from offending source devices. A global mute switch may be engaged that turns off the XLR outs, enabling you to audition and cue tracks on the fly. This is augmented by a standby switch that holds the SW8 on the source-A inputs in between songs.


Delizia volume of trade today and historical data of Delizia capitalization since start date of trade on the cryptocurrency exchange market.
Today's market capitalization for Delizia is 0 US dollars.
Today's Delizia volume of trade is 0 US dollars.
Capitalization of Delizia - total sum of all mined Delizia cryptocoins.
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text:
Look carefully
By Marcus Chown
IN his story, All Summer in a Day, Ray Bradbury depicts a human colony on
Venus. Not the hellish Venus of the 1990s, with a surface hot enough to melt
lead, wrapped in sulphuric acid clouds but a more benign 1950s version where the
rain streams down incessantly like a planet-wide Niagara Falls. In this world of
perpetual gloom, an unspeakable tragedy befalls a little girl. Locked in a
cupboard by her playmates on the one day in seven years that the rain falters
and the clouds briefly part, she misses the rarest and most spectacular of all
Venusian sights—a glimpse of the Sun.
I was reminded of this story the night I left the Caribbean island of Aruba,
where I had been watching the total eclipse of the Sun on 26 February. As the
taxi taking me to Queen Beatrix Airport sped past the neon-lit casinos lining
the coast road, I asked the driver whether she had been as impressed by the
eclipse as I had been. "Oh, I didn't see it," she said. "I was worried my
children would be blinded, so we all stayed locked indoors away from the
Thus my taxi driver and her children had missed the most spectacular sight in
all of nature—and one which will not happen again in their backyard for
about 350 years. And this is no isolated tragedy. In Mexico a few years back,
the government was so successful at scaring its people about the dangers of a
total eclipse that just about the only ones who witnessed it were the foreigners
who jetted in. Like my taxi driver's family, everyone else was hiding
indoors.
It is perfectly true that the Sun is strong enough to burn your retina. But
sustaining permanent eye damage is not as easy as many people imagine. If your
eyes accidentally look in the direction of the Sun, your blink reflex will
usually prevent you from staring too long.
Of course, during a total eclipse people have a strong urge to stare at the
Sun. But by taking a few simple precautions the event can be watched without
harming your eyes.
The safest way to observe the Sun is by making a pinhole in a piece of opaque
card. If the card is held up to the Sun so the shadow falls on a piece of white
paper, the paper will show a circular image of the Sun with a bite taken out by
the Moon. Often, the gaps between leaves and branches act as natural pinholes,
carpeting the ground beneath a tree with thousands of crescent Suns. If
observing the Sun indirectly seems a little unsatisfactory, it is perfectly
possible to observe it directly as long as you look through a suitable filter.
The Sun is about a million times brighter than the full Moon, so the filter has
to be equivalent to a factor-million sun block. A purpose-made solar filter will
do. So, too, will Number 14 welder's glass, which comes in sheets measuring four
inches by three inches and endows the Sun with a greenish hue. Alternatively,
take a black-and-white film, completely expose it to sunlight and have it
developed as a negative. It must be a black-and-white film because colour film
lacks the silver which blocks out infrared light. (So also does some
black-and-white film, so get expert advice.) Two layers of film blackened in
this way and sandwiched together will cut the brightness of the Sun to a safe
Even with a solar filter, it is still best to look at the Sun for only a few
seconds at a time. Of course, any instrument that boosts the concentration of
sunlight, such as a telescope or pair of binoculars, should be used with a solar
filter specially tailored for this purpose.
Next year, on 11 August, a total eclipse will be visible from Europe
including Devon, Cornwall and the Channel Islands. Let's hope that everybody
along the eclipse track gets the opportunity to see this once-in-a-lifetime
experience, and that nobody feels it necessary to hide away indoors.
More information is available at www.astro.williams.edu/IAU_eclipses
Magazine issue 2128 , published 4 April 1998
Narrowing the field


Major League Wrestling ("MLW") will return to Philadelphia for the first time in 17 years with a FUSION TV taping for beIN SPORTS at the 2300 Arena on Saturday night February 2nd.
World Tag Team Champions Rey Fenix & Pentagon Jr.
The 2300 Arena (previously named the Viking Hall, ECW Arena, New Alhambra Arena, Asylum Arena and The Arena) is a multipurpose indoor arena used primarily for professional wrestling, boxing, mixed martial arts, and concert events. The venue also host fashion shows, corporate and private parties, political rallies, conventions and more.


MSHR's Celestial Chamber Section 1 is an element of the sculptural installation Ceremonial Chamber, 2013. As a print, Celestial Chamber Section 1 was embedded in the surface of a large box that housed a hand built, analog light-audio feedback system. Visitors were invited to slide mirrored shapes along the surface of the print to change light and sound patterns below. MSHR have described the installation as an "interactive light-audio feedback ecosystem". The piece has been exhibited at Kunstverein Dusseldorf; Transmediale, Berlin; EXIT, Creteil; Three Walls, Chicago; Cell Projects, London; and Two Queens, Leicester.


text:
Donald MacMillan
One of the Loening Amphibians used by the 1925 Macmillan-Byrd Expedition, at Squantum, Massachusetts. Chapter 8 of the book discusses the Canadian response to the expedition, which proposed to search previously unexplored Arctic areas using three aircraft such as this. By 1925, Canadian officials were far better prepared to react to threats to Arctic sovereignty than they had been just a few years earlier.
Photograph by Leslie Jones
Courtesy of the Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection, 08_06_001830
Tagged Aircraft, Donald MacMillan, Richard Byrd
Resources: The Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum on Tumblr
The Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum at Bowdoin College has been on Tumblr for a number of months now. Its staff regularly uploads new content relating to the museum, its collections, and its activities. Among the people who show up are Peary and MacMillan (obviously), but also others like W. Elmer Ekblaw, one of the members of the 1913-1917 Crocker Land Expedition. Vilhjalmur Stefansson would later use Ekblaw's 1920 article "A Recent Eskimo Migration and its Forerunner" to help fabricate a (non-existent) Danish threat to Canadian arctic sovereignty.
You can visit the museum's Tumblr at:
arcticmuseum.tumblr.com
Tagged Crocker Land Expedition, Donald MacMillan, Museum, Robert Peary, W. Elmer Ekblaw


text:
Simplified Living
Monday's Meditation: On The Wisest Way To Handle Unwarranted Attacks
Not too long ago, I had an encounter with an incredibly angry woman.
That day, I was working at a storage facility where my client has a unit. I arrived first, and parked in one of the five spots available before the security gate. When my assistant arrived, we opened my trunk, pushed aside the many bags of donation from the day prior, and perched on the edge to wait for my client.
So there we were, sitting among the garbage bags, talking, when a beat up Subaru station wagon pulled into the lot. A middle-aged woman in dingy clothing got out, and approached the security gate keypad.
You can always tell when people are exceptionally crazy because they initiate communication with you in such a way that you feel as though you haven't been privy to the beginning of the conversation. It's as if you're coming in late to an exchange of which you're at the center.
"Guess you don't fucking care that you're parked in the way." She hurled the words in my direction.
Everything about her demeanor conveyed a deep-seated anger, and an attitude of victimization and resentment towards a world she viewed as unfair.
"HELLO," she spat. "My god." She was mumbling some, so that it was both hard to follow the thread of her words, and impossible to mistake how combative they were.
"Like, did you think about it? You're just gonna park right in the way so that everybody has to get out of their car?"
It was true; I had parked in a very legitimate spot that was adjacent to the keypad, thereby obstructing her ability to pull up directly next to the keypad and merely roll down her window to punch in the code. I honestly hadn't thought about it when I pulled in. Clearly, the individuals who had painted the parking spots hadn't either.
"Oh, and now you're not even going to fucking say anything!" She was trying her very best to goad me. Her desperation to incite a reaction in me was fascinating.
My assistant and I were somewhat stupefied for a moment. The intensity of her aggression, and its lack of provocation, caught us off guard.
She glowered at me, her body jerked with anger. She was in a stand-off with herself. "Yeah, just sit there. Unbelievable. Are you even going to fucking say anything?"
She was like a bomb. Like the embodiment of a grown-up temper tantrum.
For a fleeting moment, I flirted with the temptation to yell back at her. I wasn't afraid of her, and I am not one to take any shit. But the more explosive she became, the more indescribably small she revealed herself to be.
"I cannot move while you are parked here, blocking me in, but I will after you've moved. I'm sorry." I said, in a completely calm, level tone.
It was precisely what she didn't want to hear me say. She got in her car and drove a couple of feet before stopping, rolling down her window and bellowing, "Just because you have all these nice things and you're so privileged doesn't mean you're ALL THAT."
And with that, she whipped that poor, old Subaru over the partition and careened into a parking spot in front of her unit.
"Wowwwww." I said.
"Oh my gosh," my assistant said.
I couldn't remember the last time I had seen such a blatant, flagrant display of anger.
"I can't believe you were so nice to her!" my assistant said.
There are times when we need to speak up and defend ourselves. And there are times when the smartest, most loving thing we can do for ourselves is to ignore the primal urge to lash out in defense, and simply refuse to engage.
Had I uttered a word of hostility to storage-lady, the situation would no doubt have escalated rapidly. And, importantly, I would have found myself in a scenario of someone else's making, in which I would have behaved in a way that was untrue to myself. I am not an angry person. I do not spew anger and volatility.
For this woman, I was a pawn, a target onto which she could unload her judgments and rage. But as she knew nothing about me to substantiate those judgments, there was no logical way the attack was personal.
It had nothing to do with me; it never does.
Perhaps if she had known my backstory, she would have been kinder to me. Perhaps if I knew her backstory, her egregiously unmeasured, vexatious behavior would have seemed more understandable.
But as it was, I knew enough to realize that I wasn't going to be able to reason with her. And I knew I was going to expend far more energy attempting to block her energy than I would letting her words rush past me.
We do not always have to defend our honor. In fact, sometimes the best line of defense is recognizing when it isn't prudent to defend an unwarranted attack, but merely to ignore it.
We do not have to respond to that hostile email, or text message. We do not always have to try to change people's minds about us, or about our generation. Accepting that some people will hate us no matter what can be a relief.
By the time my client arrived, storage-lady had done a second loop around, undoubtedly hoping to find I hadn't moved my car, thereby proving true all the beliefs she invented about me, and engaging me in an another verbal sparring round. Too bad for her, I had moved; I am not the uncaring, over-entitled millennial she wanted me to be.
"That woman was so mean to Annie," my assistant told my client.
"Who? The person in that Subaru?" my client asked. "You can tell she's angry, just look at the way she's driving."
We all turned to watch the station wagon lunge and jolt under the direction of its pained driver, happy it was headed away from us.
Elle on March 19, 2018 at 6:28 am
thank you for this reminder !
Beverly on March 19, 2018 at 6:54 am
lovely thoughts. Not everything is personal or about you. Sometimes being an observer is the right thing.
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text:
Arts Culture
7 Things Delawareans Often Take for Granted
Ellie Delany June 2, 2017
The First State is small, but packed with places, activities and quirks we often forget to fully appreciate.
1. Being home to the best (in our opinion) craft beer
Craft breweries abound in Delaware—and, to our delight, seem to continue popping up everywhere we turn. The Daily Meal named Dogfish Head Brewery the nation's best craft brewery last spring, which Sam Calagione started in Milton in 1995. (After seven consecutive nominations, Calagione finally took home a James Beard award in 2017.)
2. Close proximity to so many beautiful beaches
What a luxury that the ocean is right at our fingertips! New Castle County residents are less than a two-hour drive from the beach. Kent County residents can get there in less than an hour.
3. Fun activities and festivals aplenty
No matter what your interests are, there's always something exciting happening here. Have you experienced Point-to-Point at Winterthur, or the Delaware Shakespeare Festival in Wilmington? How about the May Strawberry Festival in Camden Wyoming, the October Apple Scrapple festival in Bridgeville, or the fall Delaware Wine and Beer Festival in Kent County? The Delaware State Fair in Harrington each summer is a can't-miss event, where this year (July 20–29) you can see famous bands and musicians like Rascal Flatts and Darius Rucker perform.
4. The unique history of our license plates
Many Delawareans don't realize that the state's unusual vehicle registration rules make vintage black-and-white tags outlandishly valuable. Often transferred from generation to generation, low-digit tags can sell to collectors for hundreds of thousands. Plate 14 went for $325,000 last year. The state changed the colors to gold on blue in 1958, but vehicle owners are still allowed to display original or authorized replicas of the black-and-white porcelain enamel plates.
5. Our own Monster Mash
Not only are we lucky enough to have NASCAR—the world's top stock car racing circuit—visit our state, but Dover International Speedway is one of a handful of tracks that hosts two race weekends each year. This weekend (June 2–4) the "Monster Mile" will host a triple-header: a truck race on Friday, an Xfinity Series race on Saturday, and the AAA 400 Drive for Autism Monster Energy Cup series race on Sunday. However, the Monster Energy race on Oct. 1 will mark the fourth straight year that the track will host the first elimination race in the circuit's equivalent of the playoffs. At the end of this one, four of the 16 drivers will say goodbye to their championship hopes. For them, it will be over at Dover.
6. The abundance of super-fresh seafood
Because of our proximity to the Atlantic Ocean and the bays, we're spoiled rotten with some of the best crabs, oysters and sea bass in the country.
7. Living among rich history
Many of us fail to fully appreciate all the history our First State holds. George Read lived in New Castle when he signed the Declaration of Independence; Caesar Rodney signed it while living in Kent County. William Penn arrived to New Castle by boat in 1682, where he later went on to become governor.
Mispillion River Brewing to Host Annual Law Enforcement Fundraiser
Enjoy an Evening of Art at the University & Whist Club


has recognized all operating expense exclusions outlined in your lease?
passed through to you the full benefit of any property tax refunds or abatements received?
has respected all caps on operating expenses, or correctly adjusted operating expense charges to reflect reductions in leased square footage or mid-year expansions?
charged you in error for capital costs?
Did you know that Landlords often overcharge Tenants on pass-through building operating expenses? Guidance Corporate Realty Advisors' Lease Audits have saved clients millions of dollars in excess operating expense costs!
Most leases require that capital expenditures be amortized over the useful life of the new equipment installed in a Landlord's building (e.g. HVAC, parking lot, etc.). Other leases may only allow that capital expenditures be amortized and charged to Tenants to the extent that they reduce the operating costs of the building. However, in many cases, Landlords may expense rather than capitalize expensive one-time investments. This practice will inflate a Tenant's annual operating expense costs.
The operating expense Base Year amount is the reference point that the Landlord will utilize in each subsequent year to calculate your annual operating expense "pass through" costs. If a Landlord inadvertently, or intentionally, sets the Base Year costs for a Tenant too low (not in compliance with the lease document and/or Generally Accepted Accounting Principals), then a Tenant's annual pass-through costs will be too high. Consider that a $0.25/Rentable Square Feet ("RSF") error in the operating expense Base Year calculation would cost a 25,000 RSF Tenant $6,250 in additional rent in just the second year of its lease, and $31,250 in overcharges over a five-year lease term. The numbers just increase as the RSF, lease term or Base Year error amounts increase.
A Tenant may wish to consider a Base Year Lease Audit of the Landlord's Base Year costs, as well as Lease Audits of subsequent years' operating expense costs.
There are a wide variety of other errors that can occur in a Tenant's operating expense billings that can cost Tenants money. A relatively simple error could be a mistake made by a Landlord in applying any defined "caps" regarding a Tenant's operating expense billings. Other issues can be more complex, such as confirming that a Landlord has credited back to the building's operating expense accounts overtime HVAC charges made to other Tenants and collected by the Landlord as additional revenue. Has the Landlord respected all operating expense exclusions identified in a Tenant's lease? Has the Landlord charged the operating expense accounts for inappropriate expenses, such as tenant improvement costs or costs related to soliciting new tenants for the building? Have upgrades to the building been charged to operating expenses versus normal maintenance and repair costs? Have any changes in the Tenant's rentable square footage (increases or decreases) been accurately billed as regards operating expenses? Most of these issues cannot be identified without reviewing a Landlord's general ledger records, associated worksheets and specific back-up documentation.
During a Lease Audit, Guidance Corporate Realty Advisors will dig into the lease and accounting details to confirm that the Landlord's charges are accurate and in compliance with your lease documents. Lease Auditing is a complicated business; it is sometimes referred to as "forensic accounting." We are often looking at subtle details and issues that may be several years old. In some cases, buildings have been sold since the lease was negotiated and leasing agents and property managers may have changed.
To be successful, the Lease Auditor needs a clear understanding of these issues, and the accounting and billing strategies utilized by Landlords.
Few commercial brokers have personal experience with Lease Auditing!
When negotiating a client's new lease, Guidance brokers utilize their detailed knowledge of the Lease Auditing process to protect clients from unreasonable charges by negotiating favorable operating expense lease language, which typically includes extensive Operating Expense Exclusions.
Please Contact Guidance for a free Lease Auditing evaluation.
Guidance Corporate Realty Advisors provides Corporate Tenant / Buyer Representation services to corporate real estate users in the Denver metropolitan area including Boulder, Colorado. Guidance also provides these services in all major U. S. markets, as well as markets in Canada, Asia, South and Central America, and Europe. To contact: (303) 442-5400 ext 2; Email for Information; 521 Valley View Drive, Boulder, CO 80304; 5231 Monroe Street, Suite 200, Denver, CO 80216.


MD5 value for text "1619" is d1dc3a8270a6f9394f88847d7f0050cf.
MD2 value for text "1619" is 30164eca57c61eb330b49121d3237ffc.
MD4 value for text "1619" is 1cefea84f3f3427336c5f7cac76d1cf5.
MD5 value for the combined text 1619 and number 0 [new string 16190] is 1cde2efe98ea537f5359cdd66941196d.
MD5 value for the combined text 1619 and number 1 [new string 16191] is 3f1d00695d5aac23f5c556054b88be47.
MD5 value for the combined text 1619 and number 2 [new string 16192] is db508d3639b6835d673694584f971244.
MD5 value for the combined text 1619 and number 3 [new string 16193] is f6e673b2ec10fe5019309e1a056a15c2.
MD5 value for the combined text 1619 and number 4 [new string 16194] is 11b631b33a9e4b22174517856d57e2b1.
MD5 value for the combined text 1619 and number 5 [new string 16195] is 3824f84640affa08dc499d238ebbdd73.
MD5 value for the combined text 1619 and number 6 [new string 16196] is a9c154c4658d7fc48fd2be3ef34d9109.
MD5 value for the combined text 1619 and number 7 [new string 16197] is 475062cb007aa8f9bbb607c38d27ed3f.
MD5 value for the combined text 1619 and number 8 [new string 16198] is 573c38be55d418774b5efc274bb36461.
MD5 value for the combined text 1619 and number 9 [new string 16199] is 5061e9e272546d556c59c55e2853d22e.
MD5 value for the combined text 1619 and letter a [new string 1619a] is 1bd02c818587a9bfd36c6e7170e6209c.
MD5 value for the combined text 1619 and letter b [new string 1619b] is de06e0b0dc0a288aa5962347f9d0e1d7.
MD5 value for the combined text 1619 and letter c [new string 1619c] is e433e4fbb8f22755cdbefc069723a7a4.
MD5 value for the combined text 1619 and letter d [new string 1619d] is 110ee5101bcf83948c3699dcb7477326.
MD5 value for the combined text 1619 and letter e [new string 1619e] is 894b0fe247be15169f511892a4b4eb35.
MD5 value for the combined text 1619 and letter f [new string 1619f] is b3bb05670477583af28c9c996f8d960e.
MD5 value for the combined text 1619 and letter g [new string 1619g] is 716e546d7f83a4a849e58b6da66deb90.
MD5 value for the combined text 1619 and letter h [new string 1619h] is 16696cc066707a4ad574389176593106.
MD5 value for the combined text 1619 and letter i [new string 1619i] is f7e60c40839c42146956e64aefb613ee.
MD5 value for the combined text 1619 and letter j [new string 1619j] is b85a3cf83df8fa6d0787219bb5ff0a4a.
MD5 value for the combined text 1619 and letter k [new string 1619k] is e680a059a6a54bbd493c5fb490422797.
MD5 value for the combined text 1619 and letter l [new string 1619l] is 586be392b19b3ede3717167f91aaa763.
MD5 value for the combined text 1619 and letter m [new string 1619m] is ed4596e50be3086807ed5c32f4633c5e.
MD5 value for the combined text 1619 and letter n [new string 1619n] is c1b5df660b987ca197647ab236349666.
MD5 value for the combined text 1619 and letter o [new string 1619o] is 07d298e8c14a0e1f9d753ee2a1d5e7e4.
MD5 value for the combined text 1619 and letter p [new string 1619p] is e3b76c9ac6fa7b61b59e82920943a70d.
MD5 value for the combined text 1619 and letter q [new string 1619q] is c9ecbf78ece4c51e3b08a77b9f683e0e.
MD5 value for the combined text 1619 and letter r [new string 1619r] is e284c701175751a902b3f12d491f9410.
MD5 value for the combined text 1619 and letter s [new string 1619s] is db56ca4f39822324c2e00ce7c6bf72cb.
MD5 value for the combined text 1619 and letter t [new string 1619t] is fe9ca91d14d62cf91118801b1841c912.
MD5 value for the combined text 1619 and letter u [new string 1619u] is 85afe8aa756b86e908993d190c5fb58d.
MD5 value for the combined text 1619 and letter v [new string 1619v] is 6436115c42528550b112751beb984338.
MD5 value for the combined text 1619 and letter w [new string 1619w] is 02a0be5526553ef88b6284643dc7f5fd.
MD5 value for the combined text 1619 and letter x [new string 1619x] is dd7787e03100227b31ba33d331f979a6.
MD5 value for the combined text 1619 and letter y [new string 1619y] is b403dc4353d780da3395ef548bd602b0.
MD5 value for the combined text 1619 and letter z [new string 1619z] is 4b0feb63927134e8932b8467a8859855.


text:
January 16, 2021 September 1, 2021 Evan
Life On Orcas: The New Person
Section 8: The New Person
Arriving for the first time on Orcas Island is a once-in-a-lifetime thrill for the newcomer. But little do they know that a complex and hidden process begins the moment they step foot on Orcas.
Longtime residents know that dating prospects are extremely limited (see Section 17). So the arrival of a new person sets off a flurry of activity and excitement in the local community.
Thanks to an ancient communication system made up of elderly residents, naval signal flags, and messenger deer, the arrival of a new person is generally common knowledge within 30 minutes.
During this brief window, a secret fellowship known as the Matchmakers mobilizes to welcome and evaluate the newly arrived person.
Oftentimes a minor traffic mishap is arranged as the person drives into town. The resulting delay allows Matchmaker operatives to gently interrogate the new arrival, and examine the contents of their vehicle. The new arrival is unaware of this, and may only remember a friendly roadside chat with an elderly woman in rain boots.
It's just as well the new arrival doesn't know what's happening. Because the Matchmaker who makes initial, or "First Contact," makes an extensive evaluation of the person's personality, their business on the island, and most importantly, their relationship status.
If the new person arrives with a friend, the companion is carefully monitored to determine whether the pair is a couple, or just friends.
Couples are viewed with extreme suspicion. Who's this guy anyway? Is he good for her? Do we like him? These are all questions that Matchmakers consider when evaluating a newly arrived couple.
If couples are tightly bonded, they are typically driven off the island in a polite but relentless manner. Islanders accomplish this by tempering their typical friendliness: Sightseeing opportunities are left unmentioned, potluck invites are rescinded. And in some cases, more direct action is necessary. Freak deer attacks are staged, or AirBnBs are burned down. The couples typically leave within 48 hours.
In other cases, the Matchmakers may determine that one member of the couple is suitable for island culture, and could be paired with one of the many desperate single people in the community. In these cases, the relationship is undermined by the Orcas Hiking Sisters, a front organization consisting mainly of retired women with backgrounds in international intelligence.
Their methods are cloaked in secrecy, but generally involve psychological operations, such as weaponized gossip, or a well-placed, extremely attractive permaculture intern. If the unwanted partner is particularly resistant or unlikable, the Hiking Sisters may invite them for a friendly hike.
The unsuspecting partner is never seen on Orcas again. Individuals occasionally materialize in far off countries like Indonesia, with wild tales of being kidnapped by gangs of grandmothers. Needless to say, these accusations are discounted by local authorities.
No matter the method, suitable singles are welcomed to the island. Matchmaker operatives, disguised as grocery clerks, retired neighbors, or delivery drivers, continue to interrogate the new arrival and build out their psychosocial profile.
A senior operative known only as "Mee Maw" then begins the arduous process of matching the new arrival with an eligible single person.
Little is known about this process. Some speculate that Mee Maw is in actuality a Cray supercomputer from the mid-90s, housed in the barn of a retired Microsoft employee. Others assert that Mee Maw is a great grandmother in Olga, a founding member of the Israeli Mossad, who spends her retirement years matching young people using a system of index cards and yarn.
Regardless, operatives ensure that the pair meet at a community dance, or the farmer's market.
The couple will always claim that they met by chance, not realizing that perhaps half or more of the people in the village green, or the dance hall, are watching them out of the corner of their eyes. And when the pair leaves together, signal flags appear on mailboxes, and deer with tiny envelopes tied to their antlers race through the park.
Previous The Dance of Life with Carla Raccoon [Squirrel Dialogues 22]
Next Let's Talk About Manichaeism [Squirrel Dialogues 23]
Raven says:
I've been thinking about moving to Orca, these writings are hilarious! Do you think there is any hope at a woman of 43 years of age to find a suitable mate there? I'm hard working and into health & fitness, I'm looking to live a simple life with a kind, intelligent & humorous man! Do you think my soul mate might be on Orca island???
I've seen it happen on rare occasion. For the most part I would caution anyone who would move here to bring their own partner (BYOP) as the pickings are extremely slim and the winters are extremely long and dark.


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Security Alert for U.S. Citizens: November 29, 2018:
From: <ACSKinshasa@state.gov>
Date: Thu, Nov 29, 2018, 6:34 PM
Subject: Security Alert for U.S. Citizens: November 29, 2018:
Security Alert for U.S. Citizens: November 29, 2018
Location: Kinshasa
Event: The United States Embassy in Kinshasa has credible and specific information of a possible terrorist threat against U.S. Government facilities in Kinshasa. The U.S. Embassy in Kinshasa will remain closed to the public on Friday November 30th. U.S. citizens in need of emergency services can call 081-556-0151. For future updates please sign up for U.S. Embassy Kinshasa notifications at https://step.state.gov
Actions to Take:
· U.S. citizens in Kinshasa and throughout the DRC are strongly encouraged to maintain a heightened level of vigilance and practice good situational awareness.
· Monitor local media for updates.
· Keep a low profile and notify friends and family of your safety.
· Review the country page and remain alert for potentially dangerous situations.
Assistance:
· See the State Department's travel website for the Worldwide Caution and Country Specific Information for the DRC.
· Enroll in the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program (STEP) to receive security messages and make it easier to locate you in an emergency.
· Contact the U.S. Embassy in Kinshasa, located at 310 Avenue des Aviateurs, the Consular Section at tel. +243-097-261-6144 or +243-097-261-6145 (Do not dial the zero when calling from abroad) from Monday-Thursday, 7:30 a.m. to 5:15 p.m. and Fridays from 7:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. After-hours emergency number for U.S. citizens is 081-556-0151.
· Call 1-888-407-4747 toll-free in the United States and Canada or 1-202-501-4444 from other countries from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, Monday through Friday (except U.S. federal holidays).
· Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.
Date: Wed, Nov 28, 2018, 4:51 PM
Subject: Security Alert for U.S. Citizens: November 28, 2018
Event: The United States Embassy in Kinshasa has credible and specific information of a possible terrorist threat against U.S. Government facilities in Kinshasa. The U.S. Embassy in Kinshasa will remain closed to the public on Thursday November 29th. U.S. citizens in need of emergency services can call 081-556-0151. For future updates please sign up for U.S. Embassy Kinshasa notifications at https://step.state.gov
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