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TikTok star ignites massive celebrity blocking movement after the met gala
2024-05-11 02:11 milotic2

‘Let them eat cake.’ Why people are blocking celebrities on TikTok after the Met Gala https://t.co/bjCFL1LvnW

— Miami Herald (@MiamiHerald) May 9, 2024

A TikTok star named Hailey Bailey attended the recently past met gala, uploading a TikTok video of her night while showing her over-the-top look at the Met Gala lip-synching to an audio of Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette’s famous quote of “let them eat cake”, as of a May 7, it’s already amassed more than 19.5 million views. The backlash was immediate and never ending to this day, sparking a new movement being coined “Blockout 2024” and the “Blocking Boycott.”

The phrase stems from the French Revolution and Queen Marie Antoinette being told that those in poverty didn’t have any bread, to which she is said to have replied, “Let them eat cake.”

The initial complain was influencers and celebrities have not used their platforms to speak on social issues such as Palestine. Also stating that sound choice was wild, given the state of things regarding wars, famine and other social movements worldwide. Other saying that the event was truly dystopian and compared this year’s Met Gala to “The Hunger Games” franchise with the obnoxious display of wealth.



TikTok users immediately started to unfollow and block Hailey but the blockout quickly spread to a call on doing a full social media cleanse of influencers and then of celebrities altogether, in order to cut off their ad revenue and influence streams on the general public. The most mentioned ones to unfollow and block are Taylor swift, the Kardashian/Jenner clan and all the attendants of the met gala.

Users are sharing the importance of subjecting these celebrities to the “digital guillotine” or the “digitine.”



Source 1

One Game Each
2024-05-11 02:07 annienorth

We lost on Thursday 4 to 3 at Their field; it was a hard game that went back and fore and they won it in the end. We were sad and they were happy, but you win some and you lose some. Life goes on so we got home late since it was a night game. I did some homework and talked to boyfriend and went to sleep

Today's Game we owned on their Field we won 8 to 1. Game just ended. We are very happy. My Cousin Jennu and Stepsister Judy were the stars both went 4 for 4 and both scores all the points on our side. Both Sis and I got on bases each time we were up and then they got us home.it was very hot day it was 91 when we started and still 89 now, but a big win on their field for us if we can win both games on our field this Championship is ours.so wish us luck. Our Boys team is down 2 games to 0 so I hope they can come back and win

We got a bus ride home to shower then team is going out for Pizza together. Till my next Journal/Blog, Bye

Kotatsu ga nai ie (2023)
2024-05-11 00:36 aldaronsubs

Serie completa subtitulada al Español — Colaboración con Chiminini TV

Sinopsis

Marie Fukabori es una carismática organizadora de bodas y presidenta de una empresa en la que todos confían, sin importar si son clientes o colegas. Su marido Yusaku, es un artista de manga fracasado quien tuvo éxito hace más de 10 años y hoy se dedica solo a holgazanear y beber. Su hijo, Junki. que soñaba con convertirse en idol pero fue rechazado en una audición, no tiene rumbo en su vida. Para más colmo, el padre de Marie, que se quedó solo debido a su divorcio, también llegó a su casa para vivir a sus expensas. Marie tiene que cargar y alimentar a estos tres hombres inútiles.

---

Hoy 10 de Mayo es el día de las Madres en Chile, lo cual me parece significativo publicar esta serie este día, en honor a todas esas abnegadas madres que son el sostén de sus propias familias. Es en cierto modo, un homenaje para ellas.

Personalmente cuando veo series me encanta verlas de un sopetón, y por lo mismo me encantaría poder publicar series todas de una sola vez, sin embargo dada la gran cantidad de trabajo que implica traducir no siempre es posible hacerlo de esta manera, sino tendríamos una publicación cada 6 meses. En esta ocasión como fue una colaboración con varios otros fansubbers geniales, pudimos publicarla completa, para que ustedes puedan disfrutarla de la misma forma que a mi me gusta verla.

Siempre es muy buena experiencia trabajar con personas tan profesionales como los de Chimini TV. Muchas gracias a Heartstrings, Nico, Nano, Shifu y todos los de ese genial grupo.

Haz Click aquí para ver Online

Link a foro de Chiminini Tv:

https://chiminini-tv.foroactivo.com/t225-kotatsu-ga-nai-ie#599

The Friday Five
2024-05-10 23:57 davesmusictank
1. Do you have any black and white photographs that you don't know who the subject is?

2. Do you have any unique jewellery?

3. What flowers are blooming in your area right now?

4. Do you enjoy having a picnic?

5. Do you suffer from hay fever or any other allergy?

The Russian Cusanus: S. L. Frank and the Russian reception of Nicholas of Cusa Harry James Moore
2024-05-10 23:47 seraphimsigrist
I find this on line concerning two thinkers separately and together
of the first interest and I could say importance to me and I am putting it
here to keep it at hand but also for the possible interest of any here.
He was Russian and Eastern Orthodox but finally of a universal Christian
imagination and mind, formed most I have been told he would say by Plotinus
da Cusa and Lewis Carroll, but his thought drew on the whole range from
Heraclitus to Hegel to Heidegger and not slighting Rilke or Goethe.



During the intense philosophical and theological renaissance of the Russian Silver Age,1 the German Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464) received a unique appraisal in the work of Semyon Liudwigovich Frank (1877–1950), hailed by some as ‘the greatest Russian philosopher’ (Zenkovsky, 1991, p. 158). This paper will show that five of Frank's central philosophical arguments can be traced directly to Cusa's writings. Once these key arguments are taken together with Frank's own comments about Cusa, it can be concluded that Frank saw himself as Cusa's modern successor, presenting his ideas in a different intellectual context. In this sense, we can speak of Frank as the ‘Russian Cusanus’.
Throughout his life, Frank would claim that Nicholas of Cusa was his main source of philosophical inspiration. We read in the preface to Frank's The Unknowable that Cusa was ‘a thinker, who, unifying the spiritual achievements of antiquity and the middle ages with the foundational ideas of modernity, achieved a unique synthesis which the European spirit has not witnessed since’ (Frank, 1983, pp. x–xi).2 Frank explicitly aligns himself with Cusa's own venerable Neoplatonist tradition, for which ‘The classic dialectical principle that insists we should never think of any limited thing as separate from the ultimate One is applied even to human knowing’ (Miller, 2021, p. 3). In a letter to the poet and religious thinker Viacheslav Ivanov (1866–1949), Frank praises Cusa as the father of Christian Humanism:

In the spiritual history of the Western world there was a brief moment when, within the heart of the Church, the movement of “Christian humanism” appeared; a movement which received its fullest expression in the theological-philosophical system of the right-standing Catholic, Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa – one of the greatest and most underappreciated thinkers and for me my most important teacher. (Ehlen, 2005, p. 333)

Frank even goes so far as to claim that Cusa was ‘my only teacher of philosophy’ (Frank, 1983, p. xi), while in his private letters, we read the following: ‘the major objective of my philosophical work, as I see it, is to propagate in new forms and using new methods his [Nicholas of Cusa's] teaching’ (Obolevitch & Aliaev, 2021, p. 105).

It is in light of Frank's clear admiration for Cusa that we consider five arguments which form the general structure of Frank's philosophy. These include docta ignorantia, Cusa's doctrine of our knowledge of being, the recognition of absolute being as ‘non-other’, the identity of possibility and actuality in the absolute and finally the coincidentia oppositorum. Before we turn to these arguments, a brief introduction to Frank's life and thought would be suitable. Despite his subtlety and complexity Frank's work remains relatively ignored in Western theology and philosophy.
1 SEMYON FRANK'S LIFE AND WORK

Semyon Liudwigovich Frank was born in 1877 to a Jewish family. He began his philosophical career in Marxism, before moving through neo-Kantianism and into religious philosophy. Frank was forced to leave Russia in 1922 and died in London in 1950 (Boobbyer, 1995, p. 223). The originality of Frank's thought is widely recognised among Russian intellectuals. In Zenkovsky's comprehensive History of Russian Philosophy, we read the following assessment: ‘Thanks to the power of his philosophical vision, S. L. Frank can be considered the greatest Russian philosopher, and not only amongst those who shared his ideas … Without hesitation, I believe Frank's system is the most profound and significant in the development of Russian philosophy’ (Zenkovsky, 1991, p. 158). Similarly, the celebrated historian of philosophy, Dmitry Chizhevskii (1894–1977), wrote in 1939 that Frank's first major work, The Object of Knowledge, was ‘the most significant work of Russian philosophy in recent decades’ (Chizhevskii, 2007, p. 381).3 Indeed, a more recent review reminds us that the Object of Knowledge ‘reveals many problems yet to be resolved by serious contemporary philosophy’ (Nemeth, 1986, p. 271). Such problems include the question of idealism or realism, the relation of parts to wholes, the conditions for the possibility of inference, the nature of number and the relation of universals with particulars.

In light of these comments, it is a great misfortune that Frank's contributions are largely ignored in Western philosophy and theology.4 This includes both Anglophone and Continental philosophical traditions. The situation in contemporary Russia is understandably different and renewed interest since the collapse of communism has now culminated in the steady publication of Frank's collected works (Frank, 2018b). Although Frank's later theoretical works, The Unknowable and Reality and Man, have now appeared in English, Frank's earlier, and more detailed, presentation of his epistemology in The Object of Knowledge: On The Foundations and Limits of Abstract Knowledge still lacks a translation.5
In this work, Frank develops a systematic epistemology. The opening claim is that our knowledge is always limited by an unknown something (x), there is always an unknown ‘aspect’ or ‘relation’ built into any object of knowledge. However, our awareness of this limitation is, for Frank, simultaneous with a sort of knowledge of this very infinite unknown. Because the object only is what it is through its relation with the unknown, Frank supposes that in knowing the object we know also of this unknown background. In virtue of its infinity, however, we must know of it in a different way than normal discursive knowledge (knowledge which differentiates ‘this’ from ‘that’). We thus have a pre-cognitive awareness or ‘possession’ of the unknown which makes all knowledge (expressed in judgements) possible:

All knowledge defines the undefined, speaks “something” about it, and in this revealed determination of the unknown – notwithstanding whether the definition is simple or complex, whether it is discovered immediately (as in a “thetic” judgement) or through mediating levels (as in synthetic judgement) – is revealed the content of a judgement. (Frank, 1995, p. 57)

Frank claims that this ‘unknown’ is unlimited and hence infinite. Our pre-supposed knowledge of the unknown is thus a connection with infinity, or ‘absolute being’. Dennis Stammer neatly summarises this aspect of Frank's thought:

The act of knowledge is therefore not to be compared to a mere reception of completed propositional contents. It is rather the dynamic bringing-to-completion of a discovery of the unknown (‘x’) … but with every completed determination the moment x remains, because the content still refers to it. Only in reference to this x does our knowledge-content bear any sense, that is, when it is actually the content of an unknown being determined. (Stammer, 2016, p. 66)

Frank claims that we have access to this absolute being from other angles too. He believed that absolute being includes in itself all things, including consciousness and being (that which one is conscious of), and that our self-consciousness is an awareness of a certain identity of consciousness and being, and thus an awareness of this absolute being. In the final chapter of The Object of Knowledge, Frank defends the very same absolute being by developing a unique ontological argument. He claims that some notions are unintelligible without first pre-supposing their existence, such notions include ‘consciousness’ and ‘being’. Frank describes such notions as ‘cognitively permanent’ (neotmyslimoe) (Frank, 1995, p. 381). Absolute being, or God, however, is simply the identity of consciousness and being, and thus also bears this same property of cognitive permanence. In the same way that a solution of wine and water carries forward the essential properties of wine and water, such as liquidity or drinkability, so does absolute being carry forward the essential property of cognitive permanence.

Those who are familiar with Cusa's philosophy will already notice some possible points of contact here. Frank's initial argument seems to be proceeding from a sort of docta ignorantia, stressing the importance of our awareness of our lack of knowledge which then leads us to a greater ‘higher’ knowledge. This is the first of Frank's five key arguments to which we now turn. We should note here that the following reflections concern only the intellectual dependence of Frank's thoughts on that of Cusa. Although it has been established that Frank clearly read Cusa in the original, the historical contingencies of the time and place of Frank's engagement with Cusa are not examined here. Aliaev (2020) has already made significant progress in this area.
2 DOCTA IGNORANTIA
For Nicolas of Cusa, docta ignorantia or ‘learned ignorance’ is a foundational aspect of his thought and one for which he is widely celebrated. Along with the notion of ‘coincidentia oppositorum’, the proposal of ‘learned ignorance’ has been recognised as ‘the most important notion that Cusa has contributed to the history of European thought’ (Bond, 1997, p. 20). This is evident in the lengthy treatise, De Docta Ignorantia, completed in 1440. Here, Cusa refers to God as the absolute Maximum, while the creation is an image of this maximum in a ‘contracted’ form. The person of Jesus Christ is the unity of the two, the absolute-contracted. Because our human minds are limited to the contracted, or the finite, we cannot know the absolute Maximum. Cusa explains this predicament as follows:

Clearly, two or more objects cannot be so similar and equal that they could not still be more similar ad infinitum. Consequently, however equal the measure and the thing measured may be, they will always remain different. A finite intellect, therefore, cannot precisely attain truth of things by means of a likeness. For truth is neither more nor less but indivisible. (Cusa, 1997, p. 90)

For this reason, Cusa claims, ‘we know of the truth only that we know that it cannot be comprehended precisely as it is’ (1997, p. 91). Our knowledge of the truth is thus a sort of ignorance, but it is nonetheless learned in that it concerns the truth and accurately recognises our finite limitations.
Cusa goes on in De Docta Ignorantia to remind us that the essences of things or their ‘quiddity’ is unknowable, but that the more aware we become of this fact (e.g. via metaphors from mathematics and geometry) the more learned we become: ‘the quiddity of things, which is the truth of beings, is unattainable in its purity, and although it is pursued by all philosophers, none has found it as it is. The more profoundly we are in this ignorance, the more closely we draw near truth itself’ (Cusa, 1997, p. 91). The root cause of this unknowability Cusa locates in the principle which states that to truly know something means to know its cause or underlying substance. The cause of all things, namely God, however, cannot be adequately grasped. As we read

Derived being, therefore, is not understandable, since the being from which it exists is not understandable, just as the incidental being of an accident is not understandable if the substance to which it is incidental is not understood. (Cusa, 1997, p. 132)

A similar point is made in Cusa's application of mereology. As we read in a later work, Idiota De Mente: ‘a part is not known unless the whole is known, for the whole measures the part’ (Cusa, 1996a, p. 570). As Jasper Hopkins observes, ‘what he [Cusa] means is that a part is not perfectly known unless the whole to which it belongs is also perfectly known’ (Hopkins, 2000, p. 24).

In The Unknowable, Frank puts forward his own interpretation of Cusa's docta ignorantia in its fullest form. He begins by noting that all knowledge is a sort of negation, as a ‘singling-out’ of one element and negating all the rest. Frank then claims that since the unknowable is beyond knowledge, it must also lie beyond negation. We must therefore ‘negate’ negation to know the unknowable. In order to recognise the unknowable as such, a special case of negation arises: ‘here, negation evidently must emerge and function as negation raised to a higher power, as negation of negation’ (Frank, 1983, p. 78). Frank is clear to distinguish this from the simpler form of double negation (A is not not-A) – a process that constitutes all determination. He calls the higher form of negation, the negation of the principle of negation, or potentiated negation (potentsirovannoe otritsanie). The latter phrase is left untranslated in Jakim's The Unknowable but is important for Frank since negation, he claims, demands some sort of negation of itself: ‘If negation is in general the principle of determination and knowledge, we determine and know negation itself also only through negation, precisely through the negation of negation itself. The negation of negation is the positive perception of the ground and meaning of negation’ (Frank, 1983, p. 80).

Because this negation of negation leads us beyond the principle of determinate knowledge in general, it allows us to imagine an indeterminate unlimited fullness. ‘We then have the unknowable as all-embracing fullness, as the infinite in contrast to the determinate which as such is the limited, that which excludes all “other” from itself’ (Frank, 1983, p. 79). Frank then makes it clear that this is how he understands the notion of docta ignorantia – ‘what seemed to us simple ignorance [the negation of negation] turns out to be a special kind of knowledge, the most profound and adequate knowledge’ (Frank, 1983, p. 79).

Frank finally clarifies this process of ‘learned ignorance’ in three steps. Firstly, we overcome determinate knowledge-through-negation by describing the unknowable with the principle of ‘both the one and the other’. We then, however, realise that this principle is inadequate as it excludes the first principle ‘either-or’, and there can be no exclusion in our knowledge of the unknowable. ‘We took a position where we had to choose one of these two principles (by choosing the principle of “both one and the other” we rejected the principle of “either-or”) and thus became subject to the very principle we had chosen to reject’ (Frank, 1983, p. 82). Frank then suggests a second principle, the ‘neither-nor’, by reasoning as follows: ‘The unknowable is neither “both the one and the other” nor “either-or”. It is “neither-nor”’ (Frank, 1983, p. 80). Thirdly, Frank suggests the complete overcoming of these two principles would be the ‘merging’ of the two principles: ‘The only thing that can be expressed about the unknowable is that on the one hand it is both B and not-B and on the other hand it is neither B nor not-B’ (Frank, 1983, p. 93). This is Frank's central interpretation of docta ignorantia. Another related epistemological point, also present in Cusa's writings, is made by Frank in relation to our knowledge of being.
3 OUR KNOWLEDGE OF BEING
As one Frank scholar points out, ‘The influence of Cusa on Frank is not limited merely to the reception of a few formulations, but extends to the basic content of his entire philosophy’ (Ehlen, 2005, p. 333). This first becomes evident in the preface to Frank's most important philosophical treatise The Object of Knowledge, where Frank defends the primacy of being over consciousness by quoting the following from Cusa's Compendium:

We cannot deny that by nature a thing exists before it is knowable. Therefore, neither the senses, the imagination, nor the intellect attains unto the mode-of-being, since the latter precedes all these. Now, all the things that are arrived at by whatever manner of knowing signify only that antecedent mode-of-being. And, hence, they are not this reality itself but are likenesses, forms, or signs of it. Therefore, there is no knowledge of the mode-of-being, although there is most certainly seen to be such a mode. Therefore, we have mental sight that looks unto that which is prior to all cognition. (Cusa, 1996b, p. 1386)

This is certainly a loaded passage which invites varied interpretation. Cusa, according to one reading, is defending a sort of realism. He suggests that the senses, the imagination and the intellect are all ‘modes of being’, and that therefore their very being as a mode-of-being is more basic than any of them as such, and in this sense precedes them. This leaves us to conclude that being precedes intellect, senses and imagination. Some critics at least seem to read the passage in this way: ‘Mode-of-being ontologically precedes the differentiation into sense, imagination, intellect’ (Cusa, 1996b, p. 1412). In other words, because sense and intellect are modes of being, they pre-suppose the latter and are secondary to it. It may seem trivial, but common language usage supports this claim when we predicate anything of the senses, the imagination or the intellect: The phrase ‘the intellect is …’ for example, quite simply points to the intellect as, first and foremost, a ‘mode-of-being’.

In what is probably a more accurate reading of the passage, Cusa seems to be suggesting that being itself cannot be known directly. This is because all objects of knowledge can only ‘signify’ being and are not the fullness of being itself but only ‘likenesses’ thereof. We cannot know being directly, Cusa believes that, as our knowledge is always partial, it is always of determinate things. It is this insistence of the partiality of knowledge which Frank expresses in his distinction of ‘object’ and ‘content’. Cusa uses the analogy of a circle and a polygon to represent this partiality: ‘We can make progress and advance our knowledge, but just as increasing the number of sides of an inscribed polygon never reaches identity with its circumscribing circle, so our knowledge falls ever short of exactness’ (Miller, 2021, p. 20).

However, the passage also suggests that by recognising the limitation of our knowledge, we are simultaneously positing the absolute from which limited knowledge is abstracted. It is only because of the recognition of limitation that we are enabled to think beyond that limitation. Cusa thus relies here on his docta ignorantia: ‘When we recognize that our knowledge in any situation is limited and incomplete, we are enabled at once to think beyond or transcend those limits, even if we cannot always fill out what is beyond with positive content’ (Miller, 2021, p. 20).

We do, thus, know that being as a whole, or absolute being ‘exists’, as Cusa claimed above, ‘there is most certainly seen to be such a mode-of-being’. Cusa thus concludes that we must have another type of knowledge or awareness of this being. Such knowledge is variously defined as intuition or ‘mental sight’ (visus mentalis). It is this very same mental sight, ‘prior to all cognition’, which Frank defends. For Frank, all knowledge pre-supposes some knowledge of the infinite whole of which it is a part, this is Frank's ‘intuition’ or visus mentalis. As Frank writes, ‘Since the given partial moment is constituted only as a moment of the all-embracing whole, then the revelation of this moment is equivalent to the revelation of the whole’ (Frank, 1995, p. 238).
In the final chapter of The Object of Knowledge, ‘On the History of the Ontological Argument’, Frank turns once again to Cusa.6 According to the Russian thinker, Cusa proposes an ontological argument which is ‘merged with the foundations of his philosophical edifice, and thus appears both with full and conclusive clarity, and with inherent philosophical significance’ (Frank, 1995, p. 387). We read here that, at the base of Cusa's thought, there lies the idea that absolute being, or God, is inaccessible to the sort of knowledge which is built on comparison or distinction. However, it is precisely in this inaccessibility that the absolute is self-evident in the form of being. This leads Cusa to a formulation of the ontological argument, as one critic notes: ‘The absolute is the immediately evident condition of thought which goes beyond the bounds of knowledge, and in relation to which, doubt and negation, appearing in turn as acts of objectively conditioned thought, lose their meaning’ (Ehlen, 2005, p. 336). Because the absolute is literally everything, it is also our very thinking of it. This means that it is also our doubting of it, and in this way is consistently pre-supposed in all acts of thought and doubt. As Frank explains

The unattainable essence of God is for us no external object upon which we cast our intellectual gaze … but a primary basis revealing itself in us and for us, outside of which we cannot think our own being or knowledge. This primary basis possesses absolute ontological (for the Kantian “transcendental”) self-certainty, as a condition of the possibility of all truth and all doubt and all negation. (Frank, 1972, p. 130)

To deny the absolute would thus be self-contradictory. In other words, because the absolute is the condition of thought, to think it to be non-existent would be a contradiction. This is a clear position defender by both Frank and Cusa, as Peter Ehlen (2009, p. 304) once summarised with great precision: ‘On many occasions, Nicholas emphasises, and Frank follows him in this, that against the absolute, since it is the condition of all thinking, a doubt would be nonsensical, as the doubt must (in a performative contradiction) presuppose what it is doubting’.
4 THE ABSOLUTE AS NOT-OTHER
Cusa and Frank both consider this absolute as the ‘non-other’ (non aliud). Thinking automatically involves the separation of ‘this’ and the ‘other’: ‘To think means to determine something, to delimit it, to differentiate it from all else. Here, the principle of negation comes into play’ (Ehlen, 2005, p. 345). The absolute, however, as that which has no external limitation, cannot be delimited from another in this way. This absolute, precisely because it lacks nothing, is the Non-Other. As Cusa himself explains in De li Non Aliud:

Not-Other is not another, nor is it other than any other, nor is it another in another—for no other reason than that it is Not-Other, which can in no way be other, as if something were lacking to it, as to another. For another which is other than something lacks that than which it is other. But Not-Other, because it is not other than anything, does not lack anything nor can anything be outside it. (Miller, 2021, p. 105)

Alongside this use of ‘non-other’ to talk of the absolute, Cusa also employs it to talk of any finite, conceptual or real, self-identity. As one critic points out, ‘Here we see how Nicholas conflates the use of “the Not-Other” as a substantive phrase pointing toward God with the use of “not other than” as a comparative phrase used to assert self-identity for anything whatsoever [in the sense that everything is ‘not-other’ than itself’] (Miller, 2021, p. 104). In this case, the latter self-identity of all things is a distant reflection of the former absolute self-identity of the Not-Other.
The question naturally arises as to why Cusa does not fall into pantheism since claiming that God is Non-Other is surely the same as claiming that he is all and thus all is God. Cusa, however, speaks negatively precisely to emphasise the dialectical, in Frank's words ‘mono-dualistic’, nature of God's relation to finite things: ‘God is not the same as the thing in the sense that the thing is God, yet the divine Not-Other is not other than that created thing, and in that sense God is “the same” as it. We need to think of the two together dialectically, though not in the way we think about two separate created things. God and creature are at once one and not one’ (Miller, 2021, p. 107). Frank's typically Cusan mono-dualism is evident in the following passage which is worth quoting in full:

It does not matter what logically graspable opposites we have in mind: unity and diversity, spirit and flesh, life and death, eternity and time, good and evil, Creator and creation. In the final analysis, in all these cases the logically separate, based on mutual negation, is inwardly united, mutually permeating; in all these cases the one is not the other but it also is the other; and only with, in, and through the other is it what it genuinely is in its ultimate depth and full- ness. This makes up the antinomian mono-dualism of everything that exists; and in the face of this mono-dualism every monism and every dualism are false, simplifying, distorting abstractions, which are not able to express the concrete fullness and concrete structure of reality. (Frank, 1983, p. 97)

There is usually reciprocity in a relation of identity: ‘If item A and item B are the same, A is to B and B is to A in exactly the same way’ (Miller, 2021, p. 108). But in the case of the mono-dualism which obtains between absolute (Creator) and finite things (creation), we do not find this reciprocity – their identity is of a different sort since it always pre-supposes the transcendence of the absolute, in virtue of it being absolute and therefore non-finite.
Later on in De Li Non Aliud, Cusa introduces some symbolism to make this relationship more intelligible. The symbolism is based on the relationship between light and colour. Cusa writes: ‘Light is not colour … and yet, in colour light is not other than colour. Similarly, God, who is Not-other, is not the sky, which is another even though in the sky God is not other than the sky’ (Hopkins, 1979, p. 7). In the same way that light, existing in colour, is not differentiated from that colour, God, existing in finitude, is not other than those finite things. It follows that although God is not sky he is also not not-sky. This conclusion coincides precisely with Frank's proposal that the undetermined whole (x) is both not A and is not not-A:

The whole (A + B), if we consider it from the point of view of its relation to A, is clearly (A + non-A); but this means that not being A, i.e. being in this sense non-A, it is at the same time not identical to non-A to the extent that non-A is a sphere which exists only outside A. (Frank, 1995, p. 213)

Fоr both Cusa and Frank, ‘God transcends all creaturely distinctions — e.g., the distinction between sky and not-sky. So He is neither other than the sky nor other than not-sky, because he transcends these very categories. He is absolutely and unqualifiedly Not-other’ (Hopkins, 1979, p. 14).

Despite Cusa's imaginative proposals, critics have highlighted some obvious problems with the formulation of this relationship between the absolute and the finite. Notwithstanding Cusa's insistence on God's absolute non-otherness, God is still in some sense other: ‘It still follows that God, or Not-other, is in some respect other; otherwise, He could not in any respect be other than anything, and hence it would not be false that He is the sky (or the universe)’ (Hopkins, 1979, p. 15). Furthermore, if God is not other than the sky, for example it would not make sense to say that he is in the sky – nothing is in something if it also is that thing.
These glaring contradictions show that our attempts to understand the absolute in this way are made in vain. Cusa, however, was not interested in developing a philosophical system in accordance with the law of non-contradiction. His thoughts on God's non-otherness ultimately serve as mere indications of his greatness and thus finally as inspirations for our worship. This makes sense when we observe that Cusa's treatises always end with a personal response to God's glory:

All the statements we have made aim only at [making] us understand that our Creator surpasses all understanding. The vision of His countenance (a vision which alone brings happiness) is promised to us believers by the Son of God, who is Truth itself—provided that by following Him we hold to the way which has been disclosed to us by word and deed. (Cusa, 1978, p. 153)

5 CUSA'S IDENTIFICATION OF POSSIBILITY AND ACTUALITY
In view of this failure to properly philosophise about absolute being, proof of the latter's existence becomes difficult. For this reason, Cusa thinks ‘speculatively’ or in ‘conjecture’. Rather than an eristic proof or deduction, Cusa only provides hints. As one commentary acknowledges

It is misleading to call [Cusa's] a priori considerations proofs of the existence of God. For this label implies that he does take the eristic enterprise seriously—that he intends to provide conclusive arguments. In fact, however, he aims only at giving Hinweise, or indicators. (Hopkins, 1978, p. 10)

One such indicator, or ‘hint’, is Cusa's identification of absolute actuality with absolute possibility. Cusa bases his reasoning on the Aristotelian distinction between potentiality (dunamis) and actuality (energeia). Aristotle himself understood the former as power or potency and the latter as the fulfilment of this potency. He also made the distinction between active and passive potency: ‘”Potency” then means the source, in general, of change or movement in another thing or in the same thing qua other, and also the source of a thing's being moved by another thing or by itself qua other’ (Aristotle, 1984, p. 1609). On a deeper level, Aristotle's dynamic of potency and act constitutes the ontological basis of all things – the basic structure of reality. Change, becoming, movement and development are all grounded in this act-potency dynamic. As one commentator summarises:

The Dunamis/Energeia distinction is that constitution of being, on whose ground the becoming of all being is first possible. In this ontological meaning, Dunamis and Energeia together form the inner dynamic structure and the final ontological ground of all being, through which the being of not-yet-being becomes actual-being. All being can arise only within this Dunamis/Energeia structure. This structure is the inherent mode of being, present in all things, which makes possible the becoming, the being and the movement of all that is. (Li, 2013, p. 148)

For Cusa, however, the act-potency dynamic is dependent on the identification of the two in God (Cusa coins the Latin neologism possest to designate this identity). In this way, God himself becomes the immanent ontological structure of the universe. He reasons that if there is an absolute actuality, then there must also be the possibility for that actuality, there thus must be an absolute possibility. According to the Cardinal, ‘Since actuality actually exists: assuredly it is also able to exist, because what is impossible to exist does not exist’ (Cusa, 1978, p. 68). Absolute possibility, however, cannot pre-exist absolute actuality but is rather simultaneous with the latter for the following reason: ‘This possibility which was just now mentioned [viz., absolute possibility] is not able to exist prior to actuality—unlike the case where we say that some particular possibility precedes its actualization. For how would [absolute possibility] have become actual except through actuality?’ (Cusa, 1978, pp. 67–69). Li (2013, p. 151) emphasises this same point: ‘On the one hand, posse, or absolute potentiality, does not precede absolute actuality, because it is actualised only by the latter and cannot actualise itself. On the other hand, absolute possibility does not follow from absolute actuality, since it attains actual being only out of the absolute possibility’.

For this reason, Cusa concludes ‘Absolute actuality and absolute potentiality are coeternal, along with their union’ (Cusa, 1978, p. 69). If God is the identity of possibility and actuality this means that all possibilities in him are actualized. As Hopkins comments, ‘Since God is actually all that is possible to be, He cannot be other than He is. Accordingly, then, He is also actually all that He can be, whereas no other existing thing is ever all that it can be’ (Hopkins, 1978, p. 18). Being which is not God, or created being, thus exhibits a separation of actuality and potentiality, since such being could be other than it is. As Cusa states, ‘All things that exist after Him exist with their possibility and their actuality distinct’ (Cusa, 1978, p. 69). Similarly, all God's predicates are everything which they are able to be and are thus the greatest they can be. As we read, ‘He is great. But He is great in such way that He is greatness which is everything it is able to be’ (Cusa, 1978, p. 71).
Frank clearly depended on Cusa's identification of possibility and actuality. This is most evident in his argument from logical inference. Here, Frank argues that for premises to lead to a conclusion there must be a ‘law of connection’. This law of connection however is then also considered a premise so a new ‘law of connection’ is needed ad infinitum:

In order to transition from immediate knowledge (given in a premise or premises) to new knowledge (a conclusion), it is necessary to have immediate knowledge about the order of combining the premises with the conclusion; but this later knowledge should in turn be united with the previous which again presupposes a new unifying link etc. (Frank, 1995, p. 179)

For Aristotle, such an infinite regress exists only on the level of potentiality, and not actuality. But Frank, inspired by Cusa's possest, thought that potentiality and actually are not so distinct as Aristotle suggested, and that they even ‘coincide’ in the absolute. For this reason, he thought that the regress in his problem of logical inference was actual and not just potential. This then leads him to suggest that the only way to avoid a vicious actual regress is to pre-suppose that both premises and conclusions are already ‘embedded’ in absolute being, where, presumably, everything infers everything else.

So for both Frank and Cusa, in virtue of his uniting potentiality and actuality, everything in God is everything it can be, unlike finite things which can always be otherwise. As Li (2013, p. 152) summarises: ‘Only God's actual being is absolutely identical with his posse, since all of God's creation, although it is actually what it is, is not however actually that which it can be’. This identity of potentiality and actuality is evident in the following ambiguous sentence: ‘Ita ut solus Deus id sit quod esse potest’ (Cusa, 1978, p. 68). Hopkins translates the sentence, ‘hence God alone is what (He) is able to be’. An alternative translation reads ‘Only God is that which can be’ (Li, 2013, p. 152).7 This passage can thus be read to show that the identity of potentiality and actuality includes in itself all being. It is this thought which leads Cusa to suggest that God contains in himself all things. This is a move towards panentheism which Frank has evidently been following. Additionally, if God contains in himself all things this includes both negation and affirmation, and in this sense, we begin to see that opposites and contradictories somehow coincide in God.
6 COINCIDENTIA OPPOSITORUM
As Cusa hinted in De Possest, God is absolute actuality and absolute possibility, and thus, in some sense, is all things. As we read, ‘He is all things, in the sense of enfolding all things. For everything that in any way either exists or can exist is enfolded in this Beginning. And whatever either has been created or will be created is unfolded from Him, in whom it is enfolded’ (Cusa, 1978, p. 71). This thesis of God as the enfolded universe lead Cusa to his trademark doctrine of the coincidentia oppositorum. As Cusa writes

God, then, is all things, so that He is not able to be anything else. He is so present everywhere that He is not able to be present anywhere else … In this way it is not difficult to see that God is free of all opposition, and to see how those things which seem to us to be opposites are identical in Him, how in Him negation is not opposed to affirmation, and [so on for] every such thing. (Cusa, 1978, p. 77)

Cusa, throughout his lifetime, illustrated this coincidence of opposites by means of symbolism. For example, in De Possest he imagines a boy playing with a spinning top

A boy pitches out a top; and as he does so, he pulls it back with the string which is wound around it. The greater the strength of his arm, the faster the top is made to rotate —until it seems (while it is moving at the faster speed) to be motionless and at rest. Indeed, boys speak of it as then at rest. (Cusa, 1978, p. 83)

Cusa then imagines a hypothetical situation where the spinning top is accelerated to an infinite velocity. In this case, no movement would be detected in the spinning top. As Hopkins comments: ‘The faster the top spins, the more it seems to be at rest. If it could spin with infinite velocity, it would be at rest’ (Hopkins, 1978, p. 21). If we then stood the top above a fixed circle, then any point on the edge of the spinning top would be above any point lying directly underneath it on the circle (See Figure 1). In this way, opposite points on the spinning top ‘b' and ‘c’ coincide since they are both simultaneously above the fixed point underneath them ‘d’: ‘Since the motion would be of infinite velocity, points b and c would be temporally present together at point d of the fixed circle’ (Cusa, 1978, p. 85).
Details are in the caption following the image
FIGURE 1
Open in figure viewer
PowerPoint
Nicholas of Cusa, (1978, pp. 82–83).

From here, Cusa concludes that eternity can be present at each fixed point of time, and that ‘God as the Beginning and the End is at once and as a whole present in all things’ (Cusa, 1978, p. 85). Additionally, Cusa draws the conclusion from this illustration that things which are separate from us are not separate from God. This is because the two fixed points (‘d’ and ‘e’) also coincide when we realise that one of the points on the upper circle is above both ‘d’ and ‘e’. As we read, ‘d and e are separated by that diameter of the circle of which they are opposite points. But [there is] no [such separation] in God; for when b comes to d, it is at the same time also at e’ (Cusa, 1978, p. 87).
Cusa approaches this very same coincidence of opposites via another route in De Beryllo. Here he introduces the symbolism of a set of angles and a straight line. Cusa's main point here is that a maximally obtuse angle and a minimally acute angle coincide in a straight line. As Cusa suggests, ‘When you see the maximal and the minimal formable angle, your sight will not land on any angle but rather upon a simple line, which is the beginning of angles’ (Cusa, 1998, p. 795). Furthermore, in Cusa's understanding, all angles are only angles to the extent they partake of this original ‘angularity’. In Cusa's words:

[In our symbolism] every positable angle testifies of itself that it is not true angularity itself. For true angularity itself does not admit of more and less. For if it could be greater or smaller, it would not be true angularity itself. How would it be true angularity itself, since it would not be [all] that it could be? Therefore, every angle attests that it is not true angularity itself, because it can exist otherwise than it does. (Cusa, 1998, p. 795)

Cusa finally employs this same symbolism to explain how all things are enfolded in God. Just as the multiplicity of angles are contained in the angularity which is the straight line – so all things are contained in divine simplicity. Just as the straight line is ‘unfolded’ to reveal the infinite angles it contains, so does God unfold himself into creation. ‘[God] unfolds exemplars (which He has within Himself) in a likeness of Himself—just as when a mathematician folds a line into a triangle’ (Cusa, 1998, p. 801). In this way, the universe, according to Cusa, is an unfolding of God, or more precisely: ‘As enfolded in God (complicata), all things are God; but as unfolded in the created world (explicata), these very things are the world’ (Cusa, 1978, p. 70).
Frank was surely inspired by all of these symbolic gestures and was deeply drawn to the notion of a coincidentia oppositorum. The latter, for example, is an important feature of Frank's grand narrative of the history of modern philosophy. Frank considers modern epistemological theories to have constantly oscillated, in a dialectical fashion, between a rationalistic idealism and an empiricist realism. He writes that ‘On the basis of this [dialectic], the extreme expressions of opposing tendencies approach one another and reach an identical result’ (Frank, 1995, p. 107). He then suggests this result is that rationalism and empiricism coincide. The former expands consciousness to all beings, while the latter limits being to consciousness. In this way both theories (unusually considered as opposites) coincide in that they both essentially suggest an identity of consciousness and being:

If for idealism the “object” is only “representation”, the immanent content of consciousness, while for realism “consciousness” is only the universal designation for the immanence of the object itself, for its accessibility and presence in us, then the result is one and the same: whether we contract the entire limitlessness of being into the narrow confines of consciousness or expand consciousness in such a way that it exhausts being – we essentially reach the same correlation – in both cases consciousness and being coincide. (Frank, 1995, p. 108)

This is a fascinating case of Frank taking Cusa's notion of coincidentia oppositorum and applying it to his own narrative of modern philosophy. The coincidentia oppositorum, however, not only inspired his grand narrative of the history of philosophy, but also Frank's own epistemology. As noted above, the negation of negation leads eventually to a ‘hovering’ between the ‘both-and’ and the ‘neither-not’. This hovering is Frank's antinomian knowledge, for which he credits none other than Cusa:

In the sphere of wise, knowing ignorance, our “resignation” is completely conscious and is founded on the perception of its inner persuasiveness and legitimacy. And it is not a question of impotent oscillation or vacillation, but rather of free hovering … This trans-rational position is completely stable and is rooted in the very ground of reality, though it is a ‘hovering’ between or above mutually contradictory abstract knowledges. About it Nicholas of Cusa says that “it is a great thing to be firmly rooted in the unity of opposites”. (Frank, 1983, p. 95)8

The basis of these ideas was developed in The Object of Knowledge. Here Frank notes that a unique coincidence of opposites, or a case of mono-dualism, occurs with knowledge and its object. Frank writes: ‘Here we are dealing with an exceptional, specific type of difference which is not met in any other area of study’ (Frank, 1995, p. 110). This is neither a logical difference (according to content) nor a numerical difference (according to being). This is because there is a sort of identity included in this difference. As Frank claims, ‘The content of the content [of our knowledge] and the content of the “object itself” are evidently identical, otherwise this content would not be the content of this object’ (Frank, 1995, p. 111). However, Frank also maintains that the object and our knowledge of the object ‘are in a certain sense different’ since ‘their identity would have no meaning if there were not two correlative and from here identified separate members’ (Frank, 1995, p. 111).

The only way we can possibly characterise this identical difference is through the self-revelation of an absolute being. We can only understand this self-identical difference as the ‘difference between the unknown and the known, between x, as a symbol of fullness of definitions hidden from our knowledge, and the revealed determinations in our knowledge’ (Frank, 1995, p. 111). For Frank, ‘content is always the content of an object, and the object is always an object revealing itself (more or less) in its content’ (Frank, 1995, p. 111). Object and content are thus ‘modes’ of the same reality. The content is the object in a ‘condition of known-ness’, while the object is the content, as it is given ‘in the condition of unknown-ness’, while being transformed into the known. In this sense, the opposites of ‘knowledge’ and ‘what is known’ coincide.

The coincidentia oppositorum even extends beyond Frank's epistemology into his social philosophy. Frank, for example, believed that harmonious relationships were built on the mono-dualism which was highlighted above. This includes respect for the individual, constituted as an individual precisely by his role in the group, and also a respect for the group as being constituted as such precisely by its content of individuals. This mono-dualist position is essentially the coincidence of opposites of individuality and community, a harmonious balance known in Russian philosophy as sobornost.9
7 CONCLUSION

Despite the obscurity of Frank's thoughts for Western readers, this paper has shown that five of his key arguments are thoroughly ‘Western’ in that they stem directly from his acquaintance with Nicholas of Cusa. It is worth noting that Frank was not alone in this acquaintance with the early Modern German thinker. There were indeed other notable Cusa followers who were Frank's close contemporaries, such as Aleksei Losev (1893–1988) and Lev Karsavin (1882–1952). Losev produced several translations of Cusa's works which are still in use today, including De li non Aliud (Obolevitch, 2019). Unlike Frank, however, Losev's interests took a more aesthetic direction and allowed his own thought to be shaped by ancient Greek philosophy much more than Frank. Despite this paper highlighting the ‘Western’ aspects of Frank's thought, we should mention that this character of his philosophy has already been formed not only by the influence of Nicholas of Cusa but also by a broad range of other European thinkers. The latter include Kant (Frank, 1983, pp. 87–92), Hegel (Kline, 1996; Moore, 2022) and even Goethe (Frank, 1923), along with various neo-Kantians (Swoboda, 1995). Furthermore, for Frank himself it was not a matter of primordial importance to acknowledge himself as a ‘western’ or ‘eastern’ (‘Russian’) thinker, he was evidently more concerned with perennial philosophical truths.10

It was, however, Cusa who played the most acknowledged role in this respect as Frank's ‘only teacher’. Frank allowed Cusa's very methodology, the spirit of his philosophy, namely his reflection on those Hinweise which lead us to the divine, to pervade his entire thought. As Cusa studies continue to increase in depth and breadth, we ought to keep in mind this key role which the Renaissance thinker plays for the Russian Silver age as a fascinating example of the fruitful interaction between Russian and Western speculative philosophy.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT

The author declares that there is no conflict of interest to disclose.
Endnotes
1 For an introduction to the thought of this period, see Coates (2010).
2 Translation is my own, translated from Frank (1990, pp. 183–559). For comments on this passage, see also Ehlen (2005, p. 331).
3 Chizhevskii offers some valuable comments on Frank in his landmark study Hegel in Russia: ‘Frank's The Object of Knowledge is the most significant work of Russian philosophy in recent decades. The author gives an ontological overcoming of epistemology. The most important historical roots of this purely theoretical work are Plotinus, Nicholas of Cusa, and German Idealism, including Hegel. The theory of knowledge rises from abstract knowledge to living knowledge, which takes as its object nothing partial, singular, frozen or immobile, but “living total-unity,” the “coincidentia oppositorum.” At this height, epistemology turns into ontology and being coincides with thought’ (Chizhevskii, 2007, p. 381).
4 Important exceptions include Stammer (2016), Nasarova (2017), Slesinski (2020).
5 The text was first published as Frank (1915). Quotations here are taken from Frank (1995). The work has been translated into German: Frank (2000) and partially into French: Frank (1937). A Spanish translation also exists: Frank (2018a).
6 For a detailed exposition and critique of Frank's ontological argument, see Rojek (2019).
7 As Li states, ‘Dieser Satz stellt einerseits die Identität von Gottes posse und actus dar, andererseits formuliert er aber auch, dass Gott alles ist’ [This sentence presents on the one hand the identity of God's posse and actus, and on the other hand the formulation that God is everything] (Li, 2013, p. 152).
8 Frank quotes the original: ‘Magnum est posse se stabiliter figere in coniunctione oppositorum’. The quote is taken from De Beryllo. See Cusa (1998, p. 32).
9 For a fuller exposition of these ideas, see Frank (1986).
10 Many thanks to the anonymous reviewer for highlighting Frank's attitude on this point.

.

Flashback Friday
2024-05-10 23:30 waves_of_light
Happy Friday! Every week I go through the past for this week in the past and share the top three songs. Then I pick out two more from the top ten as honorable mentions. This week, we are going back to the 2nd week in May, 2010. Quick post because I am tired and mad. I had to buy 3 tires for my car today. Not 4, just 3. Do you think they offer a deal for 3/4? Nope. 4/4? Hell yes. But I didn’t need 4! Anyways! Here are some Inkigayo stages from 1st & 2nd generation LEGENDS.



#3 Secret “Magic”





#2 Rain “Love Song”





#1 Lee Hyori “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang”





Honorable Mentions

#4 After School “Bang!”





#6 2PM “Without U”










source: SBSKPOP X INKIGAYO 1 2 3 4 5 & soompi

May
2024-05-10 23:30 stegzy

Manly Man News

Ever attempting to slot into the "modern man" category I've been trying to do some stereotypical male things like tidying the front bit of house before the burly workmen came to do the pointing. I did this by doing a spot of weeding, tidying up and giving the path outside a good sweep. The experience was enlightening and highlighted that scruffy buggers dropping things are the thing du jour. 

The state of "pavements" are shocking in the village. You'd think the council would do something about it. Of course, in the 5 years I was on the council, nobody wanted to spend the money to do anything with them, nor take responsibility for the upkeep.

This bank holiday weekend I sorted some boxes about in the garage. Moving them from one side of the garage to the other before standing there and admiring the handiwork, sucking air through my teeth and chatting to the neighbour. 

Next weekend Mrs Gnomepants is out for the day so I'll no doubt download a fishing game or play some horse racey betting game to get the testosterone flowing. You know, like stereotypical over 50s males seem to do. I'd do something footbally but I'm not sure which bat I need for that and I can never be certain if football is the one with the horses or the swimming pool.

Health News

Someone once told me that when you get to 40 things start to drop off. Well having hit 50 things are falling off with gusto. I have had my beta blockers doubled, my blood pressure tablets also doubled (though they were upped further briefly) and I have now joined the metformin club. The betablockers make me feel chill, the metformin makes me feel full and the blood pressure tabs make me feel lousy. Don't get old or unhealthy kids.

So far I feel mostly better than I was. Unbelievably knackered in the morning but by 1pm I'm climbing walls and feeling ready to take on the world for a few hours. Then after dinner, a nap is often tempting but I have to fight the urge so that I'm not work/sleep/work/sleep.

TV consuming news

In the past month we've consumed much streamed media. Fallout is being consumed on a weekly basis (because I'm weird). I'm trying not to like it much because as everyone knows, if I like something — it gets cancelled (I'm looking at you The Expanse).  

Elsewhere For all Mankind on AppleTV is being consumed on a semidaily basis. I like the concept of alternative timelines especially if the plot is well thought out and executed. Probably the same reason I enjoy Dark Skies which we are slowly consuming on DVD. 

Still struggling to find anything that is engaging on broadcast media apart from the documentary about Pompeii. I found that rather interesting if a little conjectured.

D&D News

My character, a level 5 albino drow with amnesia, purple hair and magical Torrets died breifly last month after falling over another character. Fortunately she was rezzd and I was able to be leveled up to Level 6. 

Tom, our DM, has brewed his own highly detailed world complete with mythology, lore, politics and geography. How he manages to do all this, knit, crochet and do a PhD in Philosophy at a prestigeous university in London, I have no idea.

Comparitively, some chaps in work have started a D&D session — admittedly there has only been one so far — and of course they wanted me to play advisor join in. It was fun. Not as indepth as Tom's sessions but still fun. I've been asked to see if I can get Tom to come along to the next work one he's able to. 

Podcast News

Is the web dead and all bots? The latest episode of Red Web discussed this and it was a nice little fullstop to an occasionally fascinating if a little childish podcast. Meanwhile Darknet Diaries has filled a void discussing scammers, Well There's Your Problem discussed an underground fire caused by freight trains in Brooklyn while Trashfuture continued to amuse and astound with their take on British politics and the state of the world. 

Search Engine discussed an AI powered facial recognition search engine that uses photographic data scraped from social media sites to identify people and provide a scarily accurate AI generated profile of the subject of the photo. If it doesn't have you worried, please provide your bank details in a DM to me and I'll provide you with a special piece of paper with winning lottery numbers written on it. 

Fu Manchu & Film News

Finally finished Fu Fest — 6 weeks (non-consecutive) of Fu Manchu Mania shared with Z. Yay. I think she enjoyed the films. The last one, Fiendish Plot of Fu Manchu was very silly but by 1980 the whole franchise was offensive and silly anyway. 

Second film at the cinema so far this year was Fall Guy. While I had no burning desire to see it, I wasn't entirely put off going. It was a fun homage to the 1980s series. 

Trailers for other films showing soon showed a distinct lack of intelligent films I worry this trend is detrimental to the education of children. Apart from Civil War and Dune (that's a remake in my eyes), I can't think of the last time I saw an original thought provoking film with a good plot. 

Gaming News

Running out of gaming speed. Noita was a 5 minute fancy — reminded me of old dip in dip out C64 games. Satisfactory has been the main focus this month but I'm becoming fatigued by it. I've downloaded Cities Skylines again along with Homeworld  but I dont feel draw to them at the moment. 

Food News

A couple of nice meals out recently. Our go-to venue of Wofon in Leamington Spa still wins prizes. A more recent trip to Leamington though resulted in a visit to Cantina Bodica which was also a win. We also went to see my Mum and Dad in Liverpool which involved a visit to newly opened "Italian" restaurant — Botanico. It  was as Italian as I am and such a major disappointment that I came out with a painful stye in my eye. 

I did manage to get a copy of Dan Toombs The Curry Guy: One Pot though. Some interesting dishes there that I will be making over the next few weeks if all goes to plan. However, new medication though has left me feeling a little squwiffy prior to eating. It'll pass I guess but I find myself lusting after fantasy foods less and less. 

Yawn...econuts claim world is going to end yet again
2024-05-10 23:07 cigarskunk2

The End is Nigh: Scientists Back Catastrophic U.N. Climate Warning (breitbart.com)

The U.N. has warned the world is teetering on the edge of a climate abyss and a Guardian survey affirms hundreds of the world’s climate experts agree with the globalist body, expecting global heating to pass the international target of 1.5C.

And they mean it this time as they're just as positive they are correct as they were every time they got the prediction wrong for the last fifty plus years, dating back to when they were 100% positive that global cooling would kill us all.

These morons can barely even accurately tell you whether or not it's going to rain this afternoon, so what kind of mouth breathing, window licking moron would trust that they can predict what the weather is going to be like a decade from now?

How many times have they predicted that we'll never see snow again since they first made up global warming back in the 80s?

Acid rain, holes in the ozone, rising sea levels, the icecaps melting, massive flooding AND massive droughts — they have yet to explain how both will happen at the same time — along with a whole host of other disasters which were to culminate with the extinction of mankind.

None of those things ever happened despite nothing being done to stop them — the Earth is still here, the human race is still here and we have yet to run out of resources.

Over half a century of being wrong on every single one of the thousands of predictions they've made — at what point does one get to question the accuracy of their predictions without being called a denier?

Do we have to go through another fifty years of 100% failed predictions — will that be enough to convince those of you who believe them that maybe, just maybe these people don't know what the hell they're talking about?

Let the rest of us know so we can set a calendar reminder, k?

Gotta Go & Buy Gas...
2024-05-10 22:53 rhodielady_47b

And then I'll spend the rest of the afternoon mowing and weed whacking.

Ain't Life grand?

You know you wanna....
2024-05-10 22:48 kittyglitterz
Hey there!!!

You can call me Glitters or Em, or whatever variation you’d enjoy on either name. Though I’d probably answer to anything really. I’m looking for a couple of writing partners. I’m a 33 year old female, GMT -4 or Eastern Daylight Time, whichever makes more sense to you. I would feel more comfortable if you were closer to my age, meaning if you’re not at least 21...probably I’m not the partner for you. Sorry. I’m finding myself with some extra time on my hands. So I’m looking to saturate some of that time with writing, as it is my favorite hobby. I’m also a pretty good idea chatty person, who enjoys getting to know my writing partners ooc as well—I’ve met some of my absolute best friends through writing. Not mandatory though, if that’s irritating to you just throw something at me and I’ll stop chatting. I’m flexible and happy to accomodate. I’d prefer to discuss plot over email and write over email or googledocs. However I could possibly be talked into discord. Those are the places I’m most comfortable with. I hail from the good old days of Neopets and msn messenger. So I have around 20 years of experience and my returns tend to be on the lengthy side. I write anywhere from 500 to 2000 words, it just depends on my muse and what the story requires.

I prefer m/f, and I am most comfortable writing female characters. Though I’m okay doubling when the plot calls for it. I could possibly be talked into f/f, but only if the plot is incredible. I also enjoy face claims and descriptions, hopefully you do as well. I also prefer for the FC to be an actual human, not a drawing or cartoon/anime character.

I’m completely good with smut, I prefer to not fade to black. But I also insist that all characters are over the age of 18 if smut is involved. I’m a huge fan of bdsm, so anything related to that is loved. I do tend to play more submissive characters, though. And they also tend to have a bratty edge to them. I have very few limits. mine mostly consist of: underage smut, scat/water sports, vomit, gore, feet fetishes, incest, puppy/pony play, mutilation. Anything else, ask and I’d be happy to answer.

I don’t do fandom writing. I like original plots and characters. I also love coming up with a plot with my writing partner, so I don’t have anything set in stone really. Just more brief ideas that can be expounded upon. And I’m very happy to have plot ideas brought to me as well! And honestly, a slice-of-life romance full of fluff sounds fabulous, if that’s your cup of tea too. However, here are some ideas:

Abduction: A Love Story
I'm basing this idea on a 1965 film named “The Collector”. **Bonus points if you know what I'm talking about!!** And for those who don't, this is a love story. Man has home dungeon, obsessed and stalks woman. She has no idea until he abducts her. Not to hurt her, but because he wants to be around her always. He tries to make her fall in love with him…that kind of vibe. Obviously a lot more can be discussed and plotted together.

Bounty
I am thinking maybe a bounty hunter has been hired by a criminal overlord to hunt down his ex-wife because she knows too much. So the bounty hunter is searching for his bounty, which maybe he happens to fall for and struggles with returning her…because maybe she had valid reasons for running and maybe she didn’t. Either way, she’s in danger and now at least attraction is involved. Could also involve a bit of the abduction idea as well.

Like I said, none of these are really set in stone ideas. Just brief outlines to be expounded upon. All of these ideas are open to discussion and edits and other plotting, we could combine ideas or come up with something completely different. I’m also truly open to other ideas. I tend to enjoy modern, slice of life, supernatural, horror, magical roleplays. I’m always happy for some fluff!! I’m a little burnt out on anything historical, and I’m never a fan of futuristic or sci-fi. If there’s a plot you have an idea for that you’re dying for, hit me with it! I’m open and flexible.

Looking forward to hearing from you!!
email: witchywonderlust@yahoo.com

Made A Cake!
2024-05-10 22:43 rhodielady_47b

I will confess here that it was only a quickie cake. I started off with a lemon cake mix and I added almost an entire grated apple to it and two small containers of fresh blackberries. 

It turned out far better than I deserve!

The only thing wrong with it is that it died way too young.

Next in line is a carrot cake mix. Any suggestions as to what I can do to it?

Strangers When We Meet (Vecinos y amantes) - 1960 - Richard Quine (subtitulado al español)
2024-05-10 22:36 cinemalversa

Strangers When We Meet (conocida en español como Un extraño en mi vida en España y Vecinos y amantes en Hispanoamérica) es una película dramática estadounidense de 1960 sobre dos vecinos casados que tienen una aventura amorosa. La película fue adaptada por Evan Hunter de su novela del mismo nombre y dirigida por Richard Quine. La película está protagonizada por Kirk Douglas, Kim Novak, Ernie Kovacs, Barbara Rush y Walter Matthau. La película fue filmada en Los Ángeles, con escenas filmadas en Beverly Hills, Brentwood, Bel Air, Santa Mónica y Malibú. Drama de infidelidad entre dos adultos cuyas respectivas parejas no les prestan mucha atención. El arquitecto Larry Coe, casado y con dos hijos, se siente atraído por Margaret Gault desde el momento en que la ve en la parada del autobús escolar. El hijo de Margaret es compañero del hijo menor de Larry. Margaret admira a Larry desde que vio en una revista la casa por la que le dieron un premio. Y también se siente atraída por él. La primera cita es un paseo hasta el terreno en que se levantará la casa que Larry está proyectando. 

Filmaffinity 7,6             Imdb 7,1

Oh Hay
2024-05-10 22:20 davesmusictank
It has been another lovely day.

It was sunny and yep, my hay fever is back.

Just another thing to add.

Movements
2024-05-10 22:17 davesmusictank
My April timeline from Google.






Stonebridge Pond in Faversham.

It is nice watching the swans and the mallard ducks in the pond.

Rock on!
2024-05-10 22:09 spikesgirl58

Jungfrukällan (El manantial de la doncella) - 1960 - Ingmar Bergman (subtitulado al español)
2024-05-10 22:06 cinemalversa

The Virgin Spring (sueco: Jungfrukällan) es una película sueca de 1960 dirigida por Ingmar Bergman. Ambientada en la Suecia medieval, es una historia sobre la respuesta despiadada de un padre a la violación y asesinato de su pequeña hija. La historia fue adaptada por la guionista Ulla Isaksson de una balada sueca del siglo XIII, "Töres döttrar i Wänge" ("Las hijas de Töre en Vänge"). Bergman investigó la leyenda de Per Töre con miras a una adaptación, considerando una ópera antes de decidirse por una versión cinematográfica. Ante las críticas por la exactitud histórica de su película de 1957 El séptimo sello, también invitó a Isaksson a escribir el guión. Otras influencias incluyeron la película japonesa de 1950 Rashomon. Max von Sydow interpretó a Töre. Isaksson y Bergman exploraron una serie de temas en The Virgin Spring, cuestionando la moral, la venganza y las creencias religiosas. La escena de la violación también fue objeto de controversia y censura en las proyecciones en Estados Unidos. La película ganó el Premio de la Academia a la Mejor Película en Lengua Extranjera en los Premios de la Academia de 1961 y otros honores. También fue la base de la película de terror de explotación de 1972 La última casa a la izquierda. Suecia, siglo XIV. Como cada verano, una doncella debe hacer la ofrenda de las velas en el altar de la Virgen. El rey Töre envía a su hija Karin en compañía de Ingrid, una muchacha que odia a Karin en secreto. Antes de cruzar el bosque, Ingrid se detiene y abandona a la princesa, pero la muchacha prosigue su camino y se encuentra con unos pastores, aparentemente afables, que la invitan a compartir su comida. 

Filmaffinity 7,9                Imdb 8,0

Work Around
2024-05-10 22:01 geminiwench
I am a social animal.

I am a whole unto myself,
and I am a part,
a piece of something bigger.

And I am not shy when admitting
I am desperately flawed,
individually insignificant,
and happily unruffled by the truth of either circumstance.

Behind and beyond the horrific catastrophe of human conceits
that lead us to war and all the other smaller tragedies
I hope for the best
and prepare for the worst
like a lot of us try to.

But where I personally stumble in life,
is over a certain slice of the humble pie
that I've never quite choked down easily.

All I want
in this whole damned world
is to be *heard out*.

That the little tiny job that is my purpose,...
is to connect.

I want to connect with you.
I want you to connect with me.
I want you to connect with you.
I want all people to find connection,
and I want to help
if I can.

Whatever I am doing.
Whatever I am working toward.
Whatever I am saying,...
it will always come down to
building or confirming connections.

I love networks.

I love communities.

I love society.

I also love the individual, interior connections
like the self to self.
The fluff of conscious thought needs connection, too.

I am not glue,
I am not nails or screws,
I do not wield welds,
but I do not yield holds
easily either.

I am not a force,
I am not power-itself,
no.

I am a mere minuscule base element.

Like carbon...
a simple shape whose universal purpose
seems to be that it's capable of bonding
myriads of disparate things together.

It's not "special" in that it's rare,
or beauteous or spectacular.

It's special because its ubiquitous,
universal, and the completely mundane
connective tissue of complicated matter.

A synonym for "connect"
is "articulate"
so, please hear me out.

Let me show you how easy it can be with my help...
I want to bridge the differences.
I want to translate and align.
I want to build upon myself,
and I want to build with you.

Maybe for a moment.
Maybe for a lifetime.
It's not my job to determine that part.

But here I am,
ASSOCIATING
all the time.

And few things frustrate me more
than people who insist
that the connection I can offer doesn't work,
can't work,
is impossible,
too hard,
or too fragile,
to be worth their time to DO
let alone the time to even try with me.

No, I know I cannot connect with everybody.
and I know I cannot "fix" anything.

I'm not a fixer.

I do not promise permanent solutions.

But I can help you connect.

I get so angry
and deeply offended
when people argue against my purpose
by not even allowing me to show them...

... to even hear me out.

Ryu Jun-yeol breaks silence on dating rumors, says ready to face criticism
2024-05-10 19:50 waves_of_light
Actor Ryu explains why he remained silent throughout rumors of dating Han So-hee


Actor Ryu Jun-yeol spoke out for the first time regarding the controversies surrounding recent dating rumors involving him and actor Han So-hee on Friday.

At a press conference for Netflix's "The 8 Show" at a hotel in Seoul, Ryu was asked whether his silence during the public speculation about his relationship and subsequent breakup with Han was appropriate and whether he felt a responsibility as a leading actor to address these issues.

Ryu responded, "During the issues related to my private life at that time, posts about me appeared on social media without my consent or will. I thought the best response was not to answer each one but to remain silent and bear the resulting criticism. By doing my best, I mean that facing criticism was more appropriate than explaining my stance in detail. I believe discussing personal matters here could harm my colleagues."

The relationship between Ryu and Han, which was confirmed by Han on social media following them being seen together in Hawaii, came to light in March.

Amid the rumors, Ryu's ex-girlfriend Hyeri and Han's apparent clash on social media also went viral.

Ryu and Han acknowledged that their relationship had ended just two weeks later.

"I also took the opportunity to read the public criticism after attending a golf event. It served as a chance for self-reflection," Ryu continued. "This has been a period of great contemplation since my debut. Since it's a personal matter, I believe there will be another opportunity to discuss this in an appropriate setting."

Meanwhile, "The 8 Show" is set to premiere on May 17, promising a unique exploration of the complexities of human desires within the framework of a capitalist society.

The drama depicts the story of eight individuals trapped in a secretive space divided into eight floors, where they participate in a dangerous but lucrative show that earns them money as time accumulates.







source: The Korea Times

John Williams Waterhouse
2024-05-10 17:28 ehowton

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