Greek phrases for tattoos

Once, a long time ago, roughly 2002 or so, I went and had cancer. I was 11, and the tumor was a rare guy that sprouted from the back of my neck and out of my right nostril, leaving me a medical anomaly with a lot of time on their hands. And so, during the chemo and radiation and surgeries, I escaped, and found solace in the Redwall series. I devoured every book. I was in love. And so, one day, a nice elderly couple came to visit me, stating that they were from the local make a wish branch. They said I had one wish, anything I wanted within reason. Most kids wished to go to Disneyland. One kid I knew wished for all of the current gen consoles (so ps2, GameCube, and Xbox lol) and a stack of games. Other kids had house renovations, or what have you. Some wished to meet a celebrity, like Jim Carrey, but typically others would too, so everyone would have to share a conference room while he gave each table 10 minutes of his time. Suffice to say, I did not know what to choose. Over the course of 2 weeks, I thought and I read, and at one point my mom sat me down and said, “Kid, do something cool, something neat, something no one else would do. Do something different.”
And so, when the elderly couple came back, they asked me what my wish was. I help up a copy of Salamandastron, pointed to Brian’s name at the top, and said “I want to meet this guy.”
Lo and behold, a year later I had my wish granted, and I was flown down to LA (I live in Canada) to catch him along a book tour stop. I spent a couple of days there, and on day 3, I was brought to the Four Seasons for breakfast. It was a glittering palace of marble and golden decadence. I was seated to a large oak table in a private room, and in he came, along with his wife, Liz. She talked to my sister and mother so that I could have Brian’s attention to myself, and he came and sat next to me, and handed me a backpack full of merch. We then got to talking. I had ordered a stack of blueberry pancakes, but I did not touch a single one, so elated was I. We talked about Greek mythology, and geography, and religion. He regaled me with tall tales and the complaints of an old man’s ailing body. He was kind, and warm, and seemingly quite happy to entertain the wish of a cancer kid. He gave me one of the best days of my life. After breakfast he brought us in his limo to the UCLA, where he was due to be on a panel. He had to take time for a book signing first though, but he marched me to the front with him and autographed my stack of paperbacks. I felt like royalty. Finally, we sat in the audience of an auditorium, and he spoke on a panel of writers. It was soon his turn to take to the podium, and he thundered down as the powerful orator that he was, giving creative inspiration and telling us all to make sure we never squander our gifts. Near the end he stopped to say, “I write about warriors in my books, and like to think that I know what being one entails. And I’d like to say, this boy, right here, he is a true warrior.” A spotlight was suddenly cast down upon me, and I was bid to stand up as I received a round of applause. I can only say that it felt like he knighted me that day, as if he was a king pointing on my shoulders with a pen, rather than a sword. He stands as a revered figure in my life, as his words have given me strength, and after his death I had “bellator verus,” or true warrior, tattooed onto me as a daily reminder of his legacy.
I grew up to try to get my English degree, but had that cut short with cancer 2. I realized I wanted a family instead, so I found my wife, and we have a young son together. I am writing my novel. One day, when kiddo is old enough, I will read him Redwall, and he will learn about being a warrior.

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12 Years a Slave (2013) (MA/HD) $3.25
13 Hours: Secret Soldiers of Benghazi (2016) (Vudu/4K) $5.50 (Vudu/HD) $1.75 (iTunes/4K) $3
2 Guns (2013) (MA/HD) $4.75 (iTunes/HD) $3.50
21 Bridges (2019) (iTunes/4K) $3
22 Jump Street (2014) (MA/4K) $7 (MA/HD) $4.25
3 From Hell (Vudu/4K) (iTunes/4K) $3.25
47 Meters Down: Uncaged (2019) (Vudu/HD) (iTunes/4K) $4.75
A Monster Calls (2016) (MA/HD) (iTunes/HD) $3.75
A Most Wanted Man (2014) (Vudu/HD) $3.50
A Quiet Place Part II (2020) (Vudu/4K) (iTunes/4K) $6.50
A United Kingdom (2016) (MA/HD) $5
Abominable (2019) (MA/4K) $7 (MA/HD) $6
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012) (MA/HD) $3.75
Ad Astra (2019) (MA/4K) $6.75 (MA/HD) $4.25
Addams Family 2 (2021) (iTunes/4K) $5.50
Adventures of Tintin (2011) (Vudu/HD) (iTunes/HD) $4
After Earth (2013) (MA/HD) $2.25
Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (2014) (MA/HD) $4.75
Alice Through the Looking Glass (2016) (MA/HD) $5 (GP/HD) $3.50
Alien: Covenant (2017) (iTunes/4K) (MA/HD) $2.25
All Eyez on Me (2017) (Vudu/HD) $2.50 (iTunes/HD) $1.75
All The Money In The World (2017) (MA/HD) $3.75
Allied (2016) (iTunes/4K) $4.50 (Vudu/HD) $3.50
Aloha (2015) (MA/HD) $2.50
Alpha (2018) (MA/HD) $3.50
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Amazing Spider-Man (2012) (MA/HD) $4
American Hustle (2013) (MA/HD) $3.75
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Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues (2013) (Vudu/HD) $2.75 (iTunes/HD) $2
Angel of Mine (2019) (Vudu/HD) (iTunes/HD) $5.25
Anna (2019) (Vudu/4K) (iTunes/4K) $4.25
Antlers (2021) (MA/HD) $4.75 (GP/HD) $3.50
Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018) (MA/4K) $7.50 (iTunes/4K) $6 (GP/HD) $3
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Atomic Blonde (2017) (MA/4K) $4.75 (iTunes/4K) $3.50 (MA/HD) $2.25
Avengers: Endgame (2019) (MA/4K) $4.50 (MA/HD) $3.75 (GP/HD) $1
Avengers: Infinity War (2018) (MA/4K) $5 (MA/HD) $3.75 (GP/HD) $1
Awkward Moment (2014) (MA/HD) $4.75
Back to the Future (1985) (MA/HD) $4
Bad Boys for Life (2020) (MA/4K) $5 (MA/HD) $3.25
Bad Moms (2016) (MA/HD) $3.25 (iTunes/HD) $2.25
Bambi (1942) (MA/HD) $5.75 (GP/HD) $4.25
Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar (2021) (iTunes/4K) (Vudu/HD) $4.75
Batman, The (2022) (MA/4K) $3.50
Battle of the Sexes (2017) (MA/HD) $4
Battleship (2012) (MA/4K) $4 (MA/HD) $1.75 (iTunes/4K) $3
Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971) (MA/HD) $5 (GP/HD) $3.50
Before Midnight (2013) (MA/HD) $6
Beirut (2018) (MA/HD) $4
Ben-Hur (2016) (Vudu/HD) $2.50
Beverly Hills Cop (1984) (Vudu/4K) (iTunes/4K) $4.25
Big Hero 6 (2014) (iTunes/4K) (MA/HD) $4.50 (GP/HD) $1.50
Big Short (2015) (Vudu/HD) (iTunes/HD) $3
Billy Elliot (2000) (iTunes/HD) Ports to MA $4.25
Birds of Prey (2020) (MA/4K) $2.75 (MA/HD) $1.25
Birth of A Nation (2016) (MA/HD) $3.75
Birth of the Dragon (2017) (MA/HD) (iTunes/HD) $4.25
Black Panther (2018) (MA/4K) $6 (MA/HD) $4.25 (GP/HD) $1.75
Black Phone, The (2021) (MA/HD) $4.50
Black Widow (2021) (MA/4K) $6.25 (MA/HD) $4.50 (GP/HD) $3
Bleed for This (2016) (MA/HD) (iTunes/HD) $3.75
Blindspotting (2018) (Vudu/4K) $4.75 (iTunes/4K) (Vudu/HD) $4.50
Blood Father (2016) (Vudu/HD) $3.75
Bloodshot (2020) (MA/4K) $7 (MA/HD) $3.50
Bond: Skyfall (2012) (Vudu/HD) $1
Book Club (2018) (iTunes/4K) $1
Book of Henry (2017) (MA/HD) (iTunes/HD) $5.50
Book of Life (2014) (MA/HD) (iTunes/HD) $2.50
Boss Baby (2017) (MA/HD) $1.25
Bourne Collection 1-5 (MA/4K) $25 (iTunes/4K) $18 (MA/HD) $14
Bourne Supremacy (2004) (MA/HD) $3
Bourne Ultimatum (2007) (MA/HD) $4
Boy, The (2016) (iTunes/HD) Ports to MA $3.50
Breach (2020) (Vudu/HD) (iTunes/HD) $5.25
Breaking In (Unrated) (2018) (MA/HD) $4.75
Brian Banks (2019) (MA/HD) $3.50
Bridesmaids (2011) (iTunes/HD) Ports to MA $3.50
Bridge of Spies (2015) (MA/HD) $5 (GP/HD) $3.50
Bridget Jones's Diary (2001) (Vudu/HD) (iTunes/HD) $4
Buttons: A Christmas Tale (2018) (Vudu/HD) (iTunes/HD) $4.50
Bye Bye Man (Unrated) (2017) (iTunes/HD) Ports to MA $2.50
Call Me by Your Name (2017) (MA/HD) $5
Call of the Wild (2020) (MA/4K) $6.50 (MA/HD) $1.50 (GP/HD) $1.25
Call, The (2013) (MA/HD) $3.75
Candyman (2020) (MA/HD) $4.75
Captain America: Civil War (2016) (MA/4K) $7 (MA/HD) $4.75 (GP/HD) $2.25
Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) (MA/4K) $8 (MA/HD) $6 (GP/HD) $4.50
Captain Phillips (2013) (MA/HD) $4.50
Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie (2017) (MA/HD) $2.75
Card Counter, The (2021) (MA/HD) $4.75
Carrie (2013) (Vudu/HD) $5.50
Case for Christ, The (2017) (MA/HD) (iTunes/HD) $4.50
Central Intelligence (Unrated) (MA/4K) $6.50
Charlie's Angels (2019) (MA/4K) $6.50
Chasing Amy (1997) (Vudu/HD) (iTunes/HD) $3.75
Chicago (2002) (Vudu/HD) (iTunes/HD) $4.50
Choice, The (2016) (Vudu/HD) (iTunes/HD) $3
Christopher Robin (2018) (MA/HD) $4.75 (GP/HD) $3.50
Chronicle (2012) (MA/HD) $4
Cinderella (1950) (MA/4K) $7 (iTunes/4K) (MA/HD) $5.75 (GP/HD) $3.75
Cinderella 'Camila Cabello' (2021) (MA/HD) $4.50
Cinderella II: Dreams Come True (2002) (MA/HD) $6.50 (GP/HD) $5
Clifford the Big Red Dog (2021) (iTunes/4K) (Vudu/HD) $3.50
Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2 (2013) (MA/HD) $3.50
Commuter (2018) (Vudu/4K) $5.75 (iTunes/4K) (Vudu/HD) $2.25
Concussion (2015) (MA/HD) $2.75
Counselor (2013) (MA/HD) $3.25
Cowboys and Aliens (2011) (iTunes/HD) Ports to MA $2.50
Creed III (2023) (Vudu/4K) $5 (Vudu/HD) $3
Croods (2013) (MA/HD) $3
Croods: A New Age (2020) (MA/HD) $4.75
Cruella (2021) (MA/4K) $5.50 (MA/HD) $3.50 (GP/HD) $2.50
Daddy's Home 2 (2017) (Vudu/4K) $4.25 (iTunes/4K) $2 (Vudu/HD) $2.25
Dark Tower (2017) (MA/HD) $2.75
Darkest Minds, The (2018) (MA/HD) $4.25
Dead Man Down (2013) (MA/HD) $4.50
Deadpool (2016) (MA/4K) $6 (iTunes/4K) (MA/HD) $1.75
Deadpool 2 (2018) (MA/HD) $3
Dear Evan Hansen (2021) (MA/HD) $3.75
Death Wish (2018) (Vudu/HD) $2.25
Dentist Collection 1-2 (1996-1998) (Vudu/HD) $5
Detroit (2017) (iTunes/4K) Ports to MA $4.50
Diary of a Wimpy Kid (2010) (MA/HD) $4.25
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul (2017) (MA/HD) $2
Die Hard (1988) (MA/4K) $6.75 (MA/HD) $4
Die Hard 1-5 (MA/HD) $15 $4.75 Each
Disaster Artist, The (2017) (Vudu/HD) $5.50
Django Unchained (2012) (Vudu/HD) $2.50
Dolittle (2020) (MA/HD) $3.25
Doorman (2020) (Vudu/HD) (iTunes/4K) $3.75
Downsizing (2017) (iTunes/4K) (Vudu/HD) $1.25
Dr. No (1962) (Vudu/HD) $6.75
Dr. Seuss' The Lorax (2012) (MA/HD) $3 (iTunes/HD) $2.25
Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931), The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), The Wolf Man (1941), The Invisible Man (1933), The Mummy (1932) (MA/HD) $18.50
Draft Day (2014) (Vudu/HD) $3.25 (iTunes/HD) $2.50
Dredd (2012) (Vudu/4K) $6.50 (iTunes/4K) (Vudu/HD) $3.25
Duff, The (2015) (Vudu/HD) (iTunes/HD) $2.50
Dying of the Light (2014) (Vudu/HD) $2.25
Early Man (2018) (Vudu/HD) (iTunes/4K) $4.75
Earth Girls Are Easy (1988) (Vudu/HD) $5
Edward Scissorhands (1990) (MA/HD) $3
El Chicano (2019) (MA/HD) $4.75
Emoji Movie (2017) (MA/HD) $2.25
Ender's Game (2013) (iTunes/4K) (Vudu/HD) $3.25
English Patient (1996) (Vudu/HD) (iTunes/HD) $4.75
Epic (2013) (MA/HD) $2.25 (iTunes/SD) $1.25
Escape from Planet Earth (2013) (Vudu/HD) $4.25
Eternals (2021) (MA/4K) $6.75 (MA/HD) $4.25 (GP/HD) $2.75
Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn (1987) (Vudu/HD) $4.75
Evil Dead Rise (2023) (MA/4K) $6.50 (MA/HD) $4.50
Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014) (iTunes/4K) (MA/HD) $3.50
Expendables 1-3 (Vudu/4K) $15 (Vudu/HD) $4.75
F9: The Fast Saga + Director's Cut (2021) (MA/4K) $6.75 (MA/HD) $4.75
Fahrenheit 451 (2018) (Vudu/HD) (iTunes/HD) $4.50 (GP/HD) $3
Fantastic Four (2015) (iTunes/4K) (MA/HD) $4
Fast & Furious Collection 1-8 (MA/4K) $23 1-9 (MA/HD) $10
Fast X (2023) (MA/HD) $5.50
Fatherhood (2021) (MA/HD) $3.50
Fault in Our Stars (2014) (MA/HD) $1.50
Fences (2016) (iTunes/4K) (Vudu/HD) $1.75
Ferdinand (2017) (MA/HD) $3.25
Finest Hours, The (2016) (MA/HD) $6.25 (GP/HD) $3.75
Flatliners (2017) (MA/HD) $4.25
Footloose (2011) (Vudu/HD) $5 (iTunes/HD) $3.50
Ford v Ferrari (2019) (MA/HD) $4.50
Fox and the Hound (1981) (MA/HD) $6.25 (GP/HD) $4.75
Foxcatcher (2014) (MA/HD) $3.75
Frank & Lola (2016) (iTunes/HD) Ports to MA $4.50
French Dispatch (2021) (MA/HD) $4.75 (GP/HD) $3.50
Frozen (2013) (MA/4K) $5.50 (MA/HD) $3.50 (GP/HD) $1.50
Fury (2014) (MA/4K) $6.25 (MA/HD) $3.25
Future World (2018) (Vudu/HD) $4
G.I. Joe: Retaliation (2013) (iTunes/4K) (Vudu/HD) $3.75
Gate, The (1987) (Vudu/SD) $3.75
Get on Up (2014) (iTunes/HD) Ports to MA $4.50
Get Out (2017) (iTunes/4K) (MA/HD) $3.50
Ghostbusters (1984) (MA/4K) $7 (MA/HD) $3.50
Gifted (2017) (MA/HD) $4.50
Girl In The Spider's Web (2018) (MA/HD) $4
Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011) (MA/HD) $6
Girls Trip (2017) (MA/HD) $1.50 (iTunes/HD) $1
Godfather Trilogy (iTunes/4K) (Vudu/HD) $14
Gods of Egypt (2016) (Vudu/HD) $2
Gone Girl (2014) (iTunes/4K) (MA/HD) $5.50
Good Boys (2019) (MA/HD) $3.75
Good Dinosaur (2015) (iTunes/4K) (MA/HD) $5.25 (GP/HD) $2.75
Goosebumps (2015) (MA/HD) $4.75
Gotti (2018) (Vudu/HD) $3
Grace Unplugged (2013) (Vudu/HD) $5.25
Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) (MA/HD) $3.75
Grey, The (2012) (MA/HD) (iTunes/HD) $3.50
Grinch (2018) (MA/HD) $6.50
Grown Ups 2 (2013) (MA/HD) $5
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017) (MA/HD) $4.25 (GP/HD) $1.25
Guilt Trip (2012) (Vudu/HD) $3.50 (iTunes/HD) $1.75
Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998), The Curse of Michael Myers (1995), Resurrection (2002) (Vudu/HD) (iTunes/HD) $10.50
Hands of Stone (2016) (Vudu/HD) $3.50
Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013) (Vudu/HD) (iTunes/HD) $2.50
Hateful Eight (2015) (Vudu/HD) $2
Heat: Director's Definitive Edition (1995) (MA/4K) $5.75 (MA/HD) $4.75
Heaven is for Real (2014) (MA/HD) $2.50
Hercules (2014) (iTunes/4K) (Vudu/HD) $1.50
Here Comes the Boom (2012) (MA/HD) $4
Hereditary (2018) (Vudu/HD) $3.50
Hidden Figures (2016) (iTunes/4K) (MA/HD) $2
Hitman (Unrated) (2007) (MA/HD) $6
Hitman's Bodyguard (2017) (Vudu/4K) $5.75 (iTunes/4K) (Vudu/HD) $4.25
Holiday Inn (1942) (MA/HD) (iTunes/HD) $3.75
Holmes And Watson (2018) (MA/HD) $3.50
Home Alone (1990) (MA/HD) $3.50
Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992) (MA/HD) $3.50
Home Alone Collection 1-2 (MA/HD) $6.50
Hop (2011) (MA/HD) (iTunes/HD) $3
Hot Fuzz (2007) (MA/HD) $3.50 (iTunes/4K) $4
Hotel Mumbai (2019) (MA/HD) $4.25
Hotel Transylvania Collection 1-3 (MA/HD) $16
How to Train Your Dragon Collection 1-3 (MA/HD) $7.50
Hugo (2011) (Vudu/HD) (iTunes/HD) $3.50
Huntsman: Winter's War - Extended Edition (2016) (iTunes/4K) (MA/HD) $2.75
Hurricane Heist (2018) (Vudu/HD) (iTunes/4K) $3.50
Ice Age (2002) (MA/HD) $4.25
Ice Age Collection 1-5 (MA/SD) $16
Ice Age: A Mammoth Christmas (2011) (MA/HD) $5.25
Identity Thief (2013) (iTunes/HD) Ports to MA $3.50
If I Stay (2014) (iTunes/4K) (Vudu/HD) $5.75
Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks (2017) (iTunes/HD) $3.50
Impossible, The (2013) (Vudu/HD) (iTunes/HD) $4.50
Incredibles (2004) (iTunes/4K) $6 (GP/HD) $4.50
Independence Day: Resurgence (2014) (iTunes/4K) $2 (MA/HD) $1.50
Indiana Jones Collection 1-4 (Vudu/4K) $24 (iTunes/4K) (Vudu/HD) $20
Indivisible (2018) (MA/HD) $5
Inevitable Defeat of Mister and Pete (2013) (Vudu/HD) $4.25
Inferno (2016) (MA/HD) $3
Infinite (2021) (Vudu/4K) $5.50 (iTunes/4K) (Vudu/HD) $4.50
Inside Out (2015) (MA/4K) $5.75 (iTunes/4K) $4 (GP/HD) $1.50
Instructions Not Included (2013) (Vudu/HD) $3.75
Insurgent (2015) (Vudu/4K) (iTunes/4K) $4 (Vudu/HD) $3.50
Interview, The (2014) (MA/HD) $3.25
Iron Man (2008) (MA/4K) $7.25 (iTunes/4K) $7 (GP/HD) $3
Iron Man 2 (2010) (MA/4K) $7.25 (iTunes/4K) $6.50 (GP/HD) $3
Iron Man 3 (2013) (iTunes/4K) $3 (MA/HD) $2.25 (GP/HD) $1.50
Iron Man and Hulk: Heroes United (2013) (MA/HD) $5 (GP/HD) $4
Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (2016) (Vudu/4K) $5.25 (iTunes/4K) (Vudu/HD) $2.75
Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014) (iTunes/4K) (Vudu/HD) $3
Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa (2013) (Vudu/HD) (iTunes/HD) $2.75
Jacob's Ladder (1990) (Vudu/HD) $3.50
Jason Bourne (2016) (MA/4K) $5.25 (iTunes/4K) $3.50 (MA/HD) $3
Jason Statham 6-Movie (Wild Card, War, Bank Job, Transporter 3, Crank, Crank 2) (Vudu/HD) $11.50
Jaws (1975) (MA/4K) $5.75 (iTunes/4K) (MA/HD) $4.50
Jaws (1975) Jaws 2 (1978) Jaws 3 (1983) Jaws: The Revenge (1987) (MA/HD) $15.50
Jesus Music, The (2021) (Vudu/HD) (iTunes/HD) $4.50
Jigsaw (2017) (Vudu/4K) $4.75 (iTunes/4K) (Vudu/HD) $2
John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum (2019) (Vudu/4K) (iTunes/4K) $4
Jungle Book (1967) (MA/HD) $6 (GP/HD) $4
Jungle Book (2016) (iTunes/4K) (MA/HD) $5 (GP/HD) $2.75
Jungle Cruise (2021) (MA/4K) $5.50 (MA/HD) $3.75 (GP/HD) $3
Jurassic Park (1993) (MA/4K) $4.75 (iTunes/4K) $3.50 (MA/HD) $2.75
Jurassic Park III (2001) (MA/HD) (iTunes/4K) $3.75
Jurassic Park: The Lost World (1997) (MA/4K) $6.50 (iTunes/4K) $3.50 (MA/HD) $2.75
Jurassic World (2015) (MA/4K) $4.50 (iTunes/4K) $3.50 (MA/HD) $2.50
Jurassic World Collection 1-5 (iTunes/4K) $17.50 (MA/HD) $8.50
Jurassic World Collection 1-6 (MA/HD) $11
Jurassic World: Dominion + Extended Cut (2022) (MA/HD) $3.75
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) (MA/4K) $4.75 (MA/HD) $1.75
Katy Perry: Part of Me (2012) (Vudu/HD) (iTunes/HD) $3.50
Kicks (2016) (iTunes/HD) Ports to MA $4.50
Kid, The (2019) (Vudu/4K) (iTunes/4K) $4.75
Kidnap (2017) (MA/HD) (iTunes/HD) $2.75
Killer Elite (2011) (iTunes/HD) Ports to MA $3.25
Killerman (2019) (Vudu/HD) (iTunes/HD) $3.75
King's Man (2021) (MA/HD) $4.50 (GP/HD) $3.50
Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015) (iTunes/4K) (MA/HD) $4.25
Krampus (2015) (iTunes/HD) Ports to MA $4.75
Labor Day (2013) (Vudu/HD) (iTunes/HD) $4.50
Lady and the Tramp II: Scamp’s Adventure (2001) (MA/HD) $7 (GP/HD) $5.50
Last Duel, The (2021) (MA/HD) $5.25 (GP/HD) $4
Last Vegas (2013) (MA/HD) $3
Last Witch Hunter (2015) (iTunes/4K) (Vudu/HD) $1.50
Last Word (2017) (iTunes/HD) Ports to MA $4.75
Leap! (2017) (Vudu/HD) (iTunes/HD) $3.25
Lee Daniels' The Butler (2013) (Vudu/HD) $2.25
Legend of Hercules (2014) (iTunes/4K) (Vudu/HD) $3
Les Miserables (2012) (MA/HD) (iTunes/HD) $2.75
Let's Be Cops (2014) (iTunes/4K) (MA/HD) $2.50
Life (2017) (MA/4K) $6.50 (MA/HD) $2.50
Like A Boss (2020) (Vudu/HD) (iTunes/4K) $3.50
Lion (2016) (Vudu/HD) $4.25
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Little (2019) (MA/HD) $4.50
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Little Women (2019) (MA/HD) $5.50
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Longest Ride (2015) (iTunes/4K) (MA/HD) $1.25
Looper (2012) (MA/HD) $2.75
Lords of Salem, The (2012) (Vudu/HD) $4.75
Lucy (2014) (MA/HD) $2
Mama (2013) (iTunes/HD) Ports to MA $3.25
Martian (Theatrical) (2015) (MA/4K) $7 (iTunes/4K) (MA/HD) $3
Mary Poppins (1964) (MA/HD) $4.25 (GP/HD) $2.75
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Mechanic: Resurrection (2016) (iTunes/4K) (Vudu/HD) $3
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Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates (2016) (MA/HD) (iTunes/4K) $3.75
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My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 (2016) (iTunes/HD) Ports to MA $3.75
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Patriot Games (1992) (Vudu/4K) (iTunes/4K) $5
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Philadelphia (1993) (MA/4K) $6.50
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Pretty in Pink (1986) (iTunes/4K) (Vudu/HD) $4.50
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Prince of Egypt (2002) (MA/HD) $6
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Psycho (1960) (MA/HD) $4.50
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Reservoir Dogs (1992) (Vudu/4K) (iTunes/4K) $5
Resident Evil: Retribution (2012) (MA/HD) $2.25
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Risen (2016) (MA/HD) $4.50
Robin Hood (Animated) (1973) (MA/HD) $3.75 (GP/HD) $2.75
Rock Dog (2016) (Vudu/HD) $4
Roman J. Israel, Esq. (2017) (MA/HD) $3.50
Room (2015) (Vudu/HD) $4.25
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Rudy (Director's Cut) (1993) (MA/4K) $6.50
Runner Runner (2013) (MA/HD) $3.25
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Silent Night, Deadly Night: 3-Film Collection (1989-1991) (Vudu/HD) $5.50
Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014) (Vudu/HD) $6
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Sixteen Candles (1984) (iTunes/HD) Ports to MA $4.25
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What is decisive is not that man frees himself to himself from previous obligations, but that the very essence of man itself changes, in that man becomes subject. We must understand this word subiectum, however, as the translation of the Greek hypokeimenon. The word names that-which-lies-before, which, as ground, gathers everything onto itself. This metaphysical meaning of the concept of subject has first of all no special relationship to man and none at all to the I. However, when man becomes the primary and only real subiectum, that means: Man becomes that being upon which all that is, is grounded as regards the manner of its Being and its truth. Man becomes the relational center of that which is as such. But this is possible only when the comprehension of what is as a whole changes. In what does this change manifest itself? What, in keeping with it, is the essence of the modern age?
When we reflect on the modern age, we are questioning concerned the modern world picture [Weltbild] *12. We characterize the latter by throwing it into relief over against the medieval and the ancient world pictures. But why do we ask concerning a world picture in our interpreting of a historical age? Does every period of history have its world picture, and indeed in such a way as to concern itself from time to time about that world picture? Or is this, after all, only a modern kind of representing, this asking concerning a world picture?
What is the world picture? Obviously a picture of the world. But what does “World” mean here? What does “picture” mean? “World” serves here as a name for what is, in its entirety. The name is not limited to the cosmos, to nature. History also belongs to the world. Yet even nature and history, and both interpenetrating in their underlying and transcending of one another, do not exhaust the world. In this designation the ground of the world is meant also, no matter how its relation to the world is thought (Appendix 5).
With the word “picture” we think first of all of a copy of something. Accordingly, the world picture would be a painting, so to speak, of what is as a whole. But “world picture” means more than this. We mean by it the world itself, the world as such, what is, in its entirety, just as it is normative and binding for us. “To get into the picture” [literally, to put oneself into the picture] with respect to something means to set whatever is, itself, in place before oneself just in the way that it stands with it, and to have it fixedly before oneself as set up in this way. But a decisive determinant in the essence of the picture is still missing. “We get the picture” concerning something does not mean only that what is stands before us - in all that belongs to it and all that stands together in it - as a system. “To get the picture” throbs with being acquainted with something, with being equipped and prepared for it. Where the world becomes picture, what is, in its entirety, is juxtaposed as that for which man is prepared and which, correspondingly, he therefore intends to bring before himself and have before himself, and consequently intends in a decisive sense to set in place before himself (Appendix 6). Hence world picture, when understood essentially, does not mean a picture of the world but the world conceived and grasped as picture. What is, in its entirety, is now taken in such a way that it first is in being and only is in being to the extend that it is set up by man, who represents and sets forth. Wherever we have the world picture, an essential decision takes place regarding what is, in its entirety. The Being of whatever is, is sought and found in the representedness of the latter.
However, everywhere that whatever is, is not interpreted in this way, the world also cannot enter into a picture; there can be no world picture. The fact that whatever is comes into being in and through representedness transforms the age in which this occurs into a new age in contrast with the preceding one. The expressions "world picture of the modern age" and "modern world picture" both mean the same thing and both assume something that never could have been before, namely, a medieval and an ancient world picture. The world picture does not change from an earlier medieval one into a modern one, but rather the fact that the world becomes picture at all is what distinguishes the essence of the modern age [der Neuzeit]. For the Middle Ages, in contrast, that which is, is the ens creatum, that which is created by the personal Creator-God as the highest cause. Here, to be in being means to belong within a specific rank of the order of what has been created - a rank appointed from the beginning - and as thus caused, to correspond to the cause of creation (analogia entis) (Appendix 7). But never does the Being of that which is consist here in the fact that it is brought before man as the objective, in the fact that it is placed in the realm of man's knowing and of his having disposal, and that it is in being only in this way.
The modern interpretation of that which is, is even further from the interpretation characteristic of the Greeks. One of the oldest pronouncements of Greek thinking regarding the Being of that which is runs: To gar auto noein estin te kai einai.*15 This sentence of Parmenides means: The apprehending of whatever is belongs to Being because it is demanded and determined by Being. That which is, is that which arises and opens itself, which, as what presences, comes upon man as the one who presences, i.e., comes upon the one who himself opens himself to what presences in that he apprehends it. That which is does not come into being at all through the fact that man first looks upon it, in the sense of a representing that has the character of subjective perception. Rather, man is the one who is looked upon by that which is; he is the one who is - in company with itself - gathered toward presencing, by that which opens itself. To be beheld by what is, to be included and maintained within its openness and in that way to be borne along by it, to be driven about by its oppositions and marked by its discord - that is the essence of man in the great age of the Greeks. Therefore, in order to fulfill his essence, Greek man must gather (legein) and save (sozein), catch up and preserve, what opens itself in its openness, and he must remain exposed (aletheuein) to all its sundering confusions. Greek man is as the one who apprehends [der Vernehmer] that which is, and this is why in the age of the Greeks the world cannot become picture. Yet, on the other hand, that the beingness of whatever is, is defined for Plato as eidos [aspect, view] is the presupposition, destined far in advance and long ruling indirectly in concealment, for the world's having to become picture (Appendix 8).
[*12. The conventional translation of Weltbild would be “conception of the world” or “philosophy of life.” The more literal translation, “world picture,” is needed for the following of Heidegger’s discussion; but it is worth noting that “conception of the world” bears a close relation to Heidegger’s theme of man’s representing of the world as picture.
*15. The accepted English translation of this fragment is, “For thought and being are the same thing” (Nahm).]
In distinction from Greek apprehending, modern representing, whose meaning the word repraesentatio first brings to its earliest expression, intends something quite different. Here to represent [vorstel-len] means to bring what is present at hand [das Vorhandene] before oneself as something standing over against, to relate it to oneself, to the one representing it, and to force it back into this relationship to oneself as the normative realm. Wherever this happens, man "gets into the picture" in precedence over whatever is. But in that man puts himself into the picture in this way, he puts himself into the scene, i.e., into the open sphere of that which is generally and publicly represented. Therewith man sets himself up as the setting in which whatever is must henceforth set itself forth, must present itself [sich ... prasentieren], i.e., be picture. Man becomes the representative [der Reprasentant] of that which is, in the sense of that which has the character of object.
But the newness in this event by no means consists in the fact that now the position of man in the midst of what is, is an entirely different one in contrast to that of medieval and ancient man. What is decisive is that man himself expressly takes up this position as one constituted by himself, that he intentionally maintains it as that taken up by himself, and that he makes it secure as the solid footing for a possible development of humanity. Now for the first time is there any such thing as a 'position' of man. Man makes depend upon himself the way in which he must take his stand in relation to whatever is as the objective. There begins that way of being human which mans the realm of human capability as a domain given over to measuring and executing, for the purpose of gaining mastery over that which is as a whole. The age that is determined from out of this event is, when viewed in retrospect, not only a new one in contrast with the one that is past, but it settles itself firmly in place expressly as the new. To be new is peculiar to the world that has become picture.
When, accordingly, the picture character of the world is made clear as the representedness of that which is, then in order fully to grasp the modern essence of representedness we must track out and expose the original naming power of the worn-out word and concept "to represent" [vorstellen]: to set out before oneself and to set forth in relation to oneself. Through this, whatever is comes to a stand as object and in that way alone receives the seal of Being. That the world becomes picture is one and the same event with the event of man's becoming subiectum in the midst of that which is.
Only because and insofar as man actually and essentially has become subject is it necessary for him, as a consequence, to confront the explicit question: Is it as an "I" confined to its own preferences and freed into its own arbitrary choosing or as the "we" of society; is it as an individual or as a community; is it as a personality within the community or as a mere group member in the corporate body; is it as a state and nation and as a people or as the common humanity of modern man, that man will and ought to be the subject that in his modern essence he already is! Only where man is essentially already subject does there exist the possibility of his slipping into the aberration of subjectivism in the sense of individualism. But also, only where man remains subject does the positive struggle against individualism and for the community as the sphere of those goals that govern all achievement and usefulness have any meaning.
The interweaving of these two events, which for the modern age is decisive - that the world is transformed into picture and man into subiectum - throws light at the same time on the grounding event of modern history, an event that at first glance seems almost absurd. Namely, the more extensively and the more effectually the world stands at man’s disposal as conquered, and, the more objectively the object appears, all the more subjectively, i.e., the more importunately, does the subiectum rise up, and all the more impetuously, too, do observation of and teaching about the world change into a doctrine of man, into anthropology. It is no wonder that humanism first arises where the world becomes picture. It would have been just as impossible for a humanism to have gained currency in the great age of the Greeks as it would have been impossible to have had anything like a world picture in that age. Humanism, therefore, in the more strict historiographical sense, is nothing, but a moral-aesthetic anthropology. The name “anthropology” as used here does not mean just some investigation of man by a natural science. Nor does it mean the doctrine established within Christian theology of man created, fallen, and redeemed. It designates that philosophical interpretation of man which explains and evaluates whatever is, in its entirety, from the standpoint of man and in relation to man (Appendix 10).
The increasingly exclusive rooting of the interpretation of the world in anthropology, which has set in since the end of the eighteenth century, finds its expression in the fact that the fundamental stance of man in relation to what is, in its entirety, is defined as a world view (Weltanschauung). Since that time this word has been admitted into common usage. As soon as the world becomes picture, the position of man is conceived as a world view. To be sure, the phrase “world view” is open to misunderstanding, as though it were merely a matter here of a passive contemplation of the world. For this reason, already in the nineteenth century it was emphasized with justification that “world view” also meant and even meant primarily “view of life.” The fact that, despite this, the phrase “world view” asserts itself as the name for the position of man in the midst of all that is, is proof of how decisively the world became picture as soon as man brought his life as subiectum into precedence over other centers of relationship. This means: whatever is, is considered to be in being only to the degree and to the extent that it is taken into and referred back to this life, i.e., is lived out, and becomes life-experience. Just as unsuited to the Greek spirit as every humanism had to be, just so impossible was a medieval world view, and just as absurd is a Catholic world view. Just as necessarily and legitimately as everything must change into life-experience for modern man the more unlimitedly he takes charge of the shaping of his essence, just so certainly could the Greeks at the Olympian festivals never have had life-experiences.
The fundamental event of the modern age is the conquest of the world as picture. The word "picture" [Bild] now means the structured image [Gebild] that is the creature of man's producing which represents and sets before. In such producing, man contends for the position in which he can be that particular being who gives the measure and draws up the guidelines for everything that is. Because this position secures, organizes, and articulates itself as a world view, the modern relationship to that which is, is one that becomes, in its decisive unfolding, a confrontation of world views; and indeed not of random world views, but only of those that have already taken up the fundamental position of man that is most extreme, and have done so with the utmost resoluteness. For the sake of this struggle of world views and in keeping with its meaning, man brings into play his unlimited power for the calculating, planning, and molding of all things. Science as research is an absolutely necessary form of this establishing of self in the world; it is one of the pathways upon which the modern age rages toward fulfillment of its essence, with a velocity unknown to the participants. With this struggle of world views the modern age first enters into the part of its history that is the most decisive and probably the most capable of enduring (Appendix 11).
A sign of this event is that everywhere and in the most varied forms and disguises the gigantic is making its appearance. In so doing, it evidences itself simultaneously in the tendency toward the increasingly small. We have only to think of numbers in atomic physics. The gigantic presses forward in a form that actually seems to make it disappear - in the annihilation of great distances by the airplane, in the setting before us of foreign and remote worlds in their everydayness, which is produced at random through radio by a flick of the hand Yet we think too superficially if we suppose that the gigantic is only the endlessly extended emptiness of the purely quantitative. We think too little if we find that the gigantic, in the form of continual not-ever-having-been-here-yet, originates only in a blind mania for exaggerating and excelling. We do not think at all if we believe we have explained this phenomenon of the gigantic with the catchword “Americanism" (Appendix 12).
The gigantic is rather that through which the quantitative becomes a special quality and thus a remarkable kind of greatness. Each historical age is not only great in a distinctive way in contrast to others; it also has, in each instance, its own concept of greatness. But as soon as the gigantic in planning and calculating and adjusting and making secure shifts over out of the quantitative and becomes a special quality, then what is gigantic, and what can seemingly always be calculated completely, becomes, precisely through this, incalculable. This becoming incalculable remains the invisible shadow that is cast around all things everywhere when mas has been transformed in subiectum and the world into picture (Appendix 13).
By means of this shadow the modern world extends itself out into a space withdrawn from representation, and so lends to the incalculable the determinateness peculiar to it, as well as a historical uniqueness. This shadow, however, points to something else, which it is denied to us of today to know (Appendix 14). But man will never be able to experience and ponder this that is denied so long as he dawdles about in the mere negating of the age. The flight into tradition, out of a combination of humility and presumption, can bring about nothing in itself other than self-deception and blindness in relation to the historical moment.
Man will know, i.e., carefully safeguard into its truth, that which is incalculable, only in creative questioning and shaping out of the power of genuine reflection. Reflection transports the man of the future into that “between” in which he belongs to Being and yet remains a stranger amid that which is (Appendix 15). Hölderlin knew of this. His poem, which bears the superscription “To the German,” closes:
How narrowly bounded is our lifetime,
We see and count the number of our years.
But have the years of nations
Been seen by mortal eye?
If your soul throbs in longing
Over its own time, mourning, then
You linger on the cold shore
Among your own and never know them.

From The Question Concerning Technology
APPENDIX

1. Such reflection is not necessary for all, nor is it to be accomplished or even found bearable by everyone. On the other hand, absence of reflection belongs to a very great extent to certain definite stages of achieving and moving forward. And yet the questioning belonging to reflection never becomes either groundless or beyond all question, because, in anticipation, it question concerning Being. Being is for it that which is most worthy of questioning. Reflection finds in Being its most extreme resistance, which constrains it to deal seriously with whatever is as the latter is brought into the light of its Being. Reflection on the essence of the modern age puts thinking and decision into the sphere of effective working that belongs to the genuinely essential forces of this age. These forces work as they will, beyond the reach of all everyday valuation. In the face of these forces, there is only a readiness for their decisive issue, or, instead, an evasive turning away into the ahistorical. In this connection, however, it is not sufficient to affirm technology, for example, or, out of an attitude incomparably more essential, to set up “total mobilization” as an absolute once it is recognized as being at hand(*21). It is a matter of constantly grasping in advance the essence of the age from out of the truth of Being holding sway within it; for only thus, simultaneously, is that which is most worthy of questioning experienced, i.e., that which radically carries forward and constrains a creating into the future, out beyond what is at hand, and lets the transformation of man become a necessity springing forth from Being itself. No age lets itself be done away with by a negating decree. Negation only throws the negator off the path. The modern age requires, however, in order to be withstood in the future, in its essence and on the very strength of its essence, an originality and range of reflection for which we of today are perhaps preparing somewhat, but over which we certainly can never gain mastery.

[*21. Heidegger refers here to the central theme of Ernst Jünger’s “Die Totale Mobilmachung,” first published in 1931 as the preliminary sketch for his monumental book Der Arbeiter [The worker] (Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlaganstalt, 1932). Originally, on the basis of his experience of World War I, Jünger sees “total mobilization” as the fundamental characteristic of modern warfare. Primarily a confrontation between man and technology, war shows itself to be a “gigantic labor process” (gigantischer Arbeitsporzess). (See “Die Totale Mobilmachung” in Blatter und Steine [Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlaganstalt, 1934], p. 130.) In the evolution of Junger’s thinking, the meaning of the term “total mobilization” extends itself to denote the phenomenon which for him is the essence modern times: man’s dominating of the earth by means of his technological will. “The war front and the labor front are identical” (Der Arbeiter, p. 109). Viewing Jünger’s thinking in the light of Nietzsche’s, Heidegger understands “total mobilization” as the final realization of the metaphysics of the will to power, or as the final phase of “active nihilism.” See The Question of Being [Zur Seinsfrage], trans. William Kluback and Jean T. Wilde (New York: Twayne, 1958), pp. 41 ff.]

1. The phrase “ongoing activity” [Betrieb] is not intended here in a pejorative sense. But because research is, in essence, ongoing activity, the industrious activity of mere “busyness” [des blossen Betriebs], which is always possible, gives the impression of a higher reality behind which the burrowing activity proper to research work is accomplished. Ongoing activity becomes mere busyness whenever, in the pursuing of its methodology, it no longer keeps itself open on the basis of an ever-new accomplishing of its projection-plan, but only leaves that plan behind itself as a given; never again confirms and verifies its own self-accumulating results and the calculation of them, but simply chases after such results and calculations. Mere busyness must at all times be combated precisely because research is, in its essence, ongoing activity. If we seek what is scientific in science solely in serene erudition, then of course it seems as though the disowning of practical activity also means the denying of the fact that research becomes ongoing activity, and in that way mounts to its proper level of performance, the more constantly does the danger of mere industriousness grow within it. Finally a situation arises in which the distinction between ongoing activity and busyness not only has become unrecognizable, but has become unreal as well. Precisely this balancing out of the essential and the aberrant into the average that is the self-evident makes research as the embodiment of science, and thus makes the modern age itself, capable of enduring. But whence does search receive the counterpoise to the mere busyness within its ongoing activity?
   
2. The growing importance of the publishing business is not based merely on the fact that publishers (perhaps through the process of marketing their books) comes to have the best ear for the needs of the public or that they are better businessmen than are authors. Rather their peculiar work takes the form of a procedure that plans and that establishes itself with a view to the way in which, through the prearranged and limited publication of books and periodicals, they are to bring the world into the picture for the public and confirm it publicly. The preponderance of collections, of sets of books, of series and pocket editions, is already a consequence of this work on the part of publishers, which in turn coincides with the aims of researchers, since the latter not only are acknowledged and given consideration more easily and more rapidly through collections and sets, but, reaching a wider public, they immediately achieve their intended effect.
   
3. The fundamental metaphysical position of Descartes is taken over historically from the Platonic-Aristotelian metaphysics and moves, despite its new beginning, within the same question: What is it to be? That this question, formulated in this way, does not come to the fore in Descartes’s Meditations only proves how essentially the change in the answer to it already determines the fundamental position. Descartes’s interpretation of what it is to be and of truth first creates the presupposition underlying the possibility of a theory of knowledge or a metaphysics of knowledge. Through Descartes, realism is first put in the position of having to prove the reality of the outer world, of having to save that which is as such.
   

The essential modifications of the fundamental position of Descartes that have been attained in German thinking since Leibniz does not in any way overcome that fundamental position itself. They simply expand its metaphysical scope and create the presuppositions of the nineteenth century, still the most obscure of all the centuries of the modern age up to now. Indirectly those modifications confirm the fundamental position of Descartes in a form in which they themselves are almost unrecognizable, though they are not for that reason the less real. In contrast, mere Cartesian Scholasticism, with its rationalism, has lost all power further to shape modern times. With Descartes begins the completion and consummation of Western metaphysics. And yet, because such a consummation is only possible once again as metaphysics, modern thinking has its own greatness.
With the interpretation of man as subiectum, Descartes creates the metaphysical presupposition for future anthropology of every kind and tendency. In the rise of the anthropologies. Descartes celebrates his greatest triumph. Through anthropology the transition of metaphysics into the event of the simple stopping and setting aside of all philosophy is introduced. The fact that Dilthey disavowed metaphysics, that fundamentally he no longer even understood its question and stood helpless before metaphysical logic, is the inner consequence of his fundamental anthropological position. His “philosophy of philosophy” is an outstanding form of the anthropological abrogation - not the overcoming - of philosophy. This is why every anthropology in which previous philosophy is employed at will but is explained as superfluous qua philosophy has the advantage of seeing clearly what is required along with the affirmation of anthropology. Through this, the intellectual situation finds some clarification, while the laborious fabrications of such absurd offshoots as the national-socialist philosophies produce nothing but confusion. The world view does indeed need and use philosophical erudition, but it requires no philosophy, since, as world view, it has already taken over a particular interpretation and structuring of whatever is. But one thing, surely, anthropology cannot do. It cannot overcome Descartes, nor even rise up against him, for how shall the consequence ever attack the ground on which it stands?
Descartes can be overcome only through the overcoming of that which he himself founded, only through the overcoming of modern, and that means at the same time Western, metaphysics. Overcoming means here, however, the primal asking of the question concerning the meaning, i.e., concerning the realm of the projection or delineation, and thus concerning the truth, of Being - which question simultaneously unveils itself as the question concerning the Being of truth.

1. The concept of world as it is developed in Being and Time is to be understood only from within the horizon of the question concerning “openness for Being” [Da-sein], a question that, for its part, remains closely conjoined with the fundamental question concerning the meaning of Being (not with the meaning of that which is).
   
2. What belongs properly to the essence of the picture is standing-together, system. By this is not meant the artificial and external simplifying and putting together of what is given, but the unity of structure in that which is represented [im Vorgestellten] as such, a unity that develops out of the projection of the objectivity of whatever is. In the Middle Ages a system is impossible, for there a ranked order of correspondences is alone essential, and indeed as an ordering of whatever is in the sense of what has been created by God is watched over as his sense of what has been created by God and is watched over as his creature. The system is still more foreign to the Greeks, even if in modern times we speak, though quite wrongly, of the Platonic and Aristotelian “systems.” Ongoing activity in research is a specific bodying-forth and ordering of the systematic, in which, at the same time, the latter reciprocally determines the ordering. Where the world becomes picture, the system, and not only in thinking, comes to dominance. However, where the system is in the ascendancy, the possibility always exists also of its degenerating into the superficiality of a system that has merely been fabricated and pieced together. This takes place when the original power of the projecting is lacking. The uniqueness of the systematic in Leibniz, Kant, Fichte, Hegel, and Schelling - a uniqueness that is inherently diverse - is still not grasped. The greatness of the systematic in these thinkers lies in the fact that it unfolds not as in Descartes out of the subject as ego and substantia finita, but either as in Leibniz out of the monad, or as in Kant out of the transcendental essence of finite understanding rooted in the imagination, or as in Fichte out of the infinite I, or as in Hegel out of Spirit as absolute knowledge, or as in Schelling out of freedom as the necessity of every particular being which, as such a being, remains determined through the distinction between ground and existence.
   

The representation of value is just as essential to the modern interpretation of that which is, as is the system. Where anything that is has become the object of representing, it first incurs in a certain manner a loss of Being. This loss is adequately perceived, if but vaguely and unclearly, and is compensated for with corresponding swiftness through the fact that we impart value to the object and to that which is, interpreted as object, and that we take the measure of whatever is, solely in keeping with the criterion of value, and make of values themselves the goal of all activity. Since the latter is understood as culture, values become cultural values, and these, in turn, become the very expression of the highest purposes of creativity, in the service of man’s making himself secure as subiectum. From here it is only a step to making values into objects in themselves. Value is the objectification of needs as goals, wrought by a representing self-establishing within the world as picture. Value appears to be the expression of the fact that we, in our position of relationship to it, act to advance just that which is itself most valuable; and yet that very value is the impotent and threadbare disguise of the objectivity of whatever is, an objectivity that has become flat and devoid of background. No one dies for mere values. We should note, for the sake of shedding light on the nineteenth century, the peculiar in-between position of Harmann Lotze, who at the same time that he was reinterpreting Plato’s Ideas as values undertook, under the title Microcosmos, that Attempt at an Anthropology (1856) which still drew sustenance for the nobility and straightforwardness of its mode of thinking from the spirit of German idealism, yet also opened that thinking to positivism. Because Nietzsche’s thinking remains imprisoned in value representation, he has to articulate what is essential for him in the form of a reversal, as the revaluation of all values. Only when we succeed in grasping Nietzsche’s thinking independently of value representation do we come to a standing-ground from which the work of the last thinker of metaphysics becomes a task assigned to questioning, and Nietzsche’s antagonism to Wagner becomes comprehensible as the necessity of our history.

1. Correspondence [Die Entspechung], thought as the fundamental characteristic of the Being of whatever is, furnishes the pattern for very specific possibilities and modes of setting the truth of this Being, in whatever has being, into the work. The art work of the Middle Ages and the absence of a world picture in that age belong together.
   
2. But did not a sophist at about the time of Socrates dare to day, “Man is the measure of all things, of those that are [der seienden], that they are, of those that are not, that they are not?” Does this statement of Protagoras not sound as though Descartes were speaking? Most importantly, is it not true that the Being of whatever is, is grasped by Plato as that which is beheld, as of whatever is, is grasped by Plato as that which is beheld, as idea? Is the relation to what is as such not for Aristotle theoria, pure beholding? And yet it is no more the case that this sophistic statement of Protagoras is subjectivism than it is that Descartes could carry into execution nothing but the overturning of Greek thought. Certainly, through Plato’s thinking and through Aristotle’s questioning, a decisive change takes place in the interpretation of what is and of men, but it is a change that always remains on the foundation of the Greek fundamental experience of what is. Precisely as a struggle against sophism and therefore in dependency upon it, this changed interpretation is so decisive that it proves to be the end of Greek thought, an end that at the same time indirectly prepare the possibility of the modern age. This is why Platonic and Aristotelian thinking has been able to pass for Greek thinking per se, not only in the Middle Ages but throughout the modern age up to now, and why all pre-Platonic thinking could be considered merely a preparation for Plato. It is because from long habituation we see Greek thinking through a modern humanistic interpretation that it remains denied to us to ponder the Being that opened itself to Greek antiquity in such a way as to leave to it its uniqueness and its strangeness. Protagoras’ statement runs: Panton chrematon metron estin athropos, to men onton hos estin, ton de me onton hos ouk estin (cf. Plato, Theaetus, 152). *23
   

“Of all things (those, namely, that man has about him in customary use, and therefore constantly, chremata chresthai) the (particular) man is the measure, of those that presence, that they presence as they presence, but also of those to which it remains denied to presence, that they do not presence.” That which is whose Being stands ready for decision is here understood as that which presence of itself within this sphere, within the horizon of man. But who is man? Plato gives details concerning this in the same place, when he has Socrates say: Oukoun houtos pos legei, hos hoia men hekasta emoi phainetai, toiauta men estin emoi, hoia de soi toiauta de au soi’ anthropos de su te kai ego: *24 “Does he (Protagoras) not understand this somewhat as follows? Whatever at a given time anything shows itself to me as, of such aspect is it (also) for me; but whatever it shows itself to you as, such is it in turn for you. You are a man as much as I.”*25
Man is here, accordingly, a particular man (I and you and he and she). And this ego is not supposed to coincide with the ego cogito of Descartes? Never. For everything essential, i.e., that which determines with equal necessity the two fundamental metaphysical positions in Protagoras and Descartes, is different in the two. What is essential in a fundamental metaphysical position embraces:

1. The manner and mode in which man is man, i.e., is himself; the manner of the coming to presence [Wesensart] of selfhood, which is not at all synonymous with I-ness, but rather is determined out of the relation to Being as such
2. The interpretation of the coming to presence [Wesensauslegung] of the Being of whatever is
3. The delineation of the coming to presence [Wesensentwurf] of truth
4. The sense in which, in any given instance, man is measure

None of these essential moments in a fundamental metaphysical position may be understood apart from the others. Each one always betokens, from the outset, the whole of a fundamental metaphysical position. Precisely why and in what respect these four moments sustain and structure in advance a fundamental metaphysical position as such is a question that can no longer be asked or answered from out of metaphysics and by means of metaphysics. It is a question that is already being uttered from out of the overcoming of metaphysics.
To be sure, for Protagoras, that which is does remain related to man as ego. What kind of relation to the I is this? The ego tarries within the horizon of the unconcealment that is meted out to it always as this particular unconcealment. Accordingly, it apprehends everything that presences within this horizon as something that is. The apprehending of what presences is grounded in this tarrying within the horizon of unconcealment. Through its tarrying [das Verweilen] in company with what presences, the belongingness of the I into the midst of what presences is. This belonging to what presences in the open fixes the boundaries between that which presences and that which absents itself. From out of these boundaries man receives and keeps safe the measure of that which presences and that which absents. Through man’s being limited to that which, at any particular time, is unconcealed, there is given to him the measure that always confines a self to this or that. Man does not, from out of some detached I-ness, set forth the measure to which everything that is, in its Being, must accommodate itself. Man who possesses the Greeks’ fundamental relationship to that which is and to its unconcealment is metron (measure [Mass]) In that he accepts restriction [Massigung] to the horizon of unconcealment that is limited after the manner of the I; and he consequently acknowledges the concealedness of what is and the insusceptibility of the latter’s presencing or absenting to any decision, and to a like degree acknowledges the insuspectibility to decision of the visible aspect of that which endures as present. Hence Protagoras says (Diels, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker: Protagoras B, 4): *Peri men theon ouk echo eidenai, outh hos eisin, outh hous ouk eisin, outh hopoioi tines idean. **27 “I am surely not in a position to know anything (for the Greek, to have anything in ‘sight’) regarding the gods, neither that they are nor that they are not, nor how they are in their visible aspect (idea).”
Polla gar ta koluonta eidenai, he t’ adelotes kai brachus on ho bios tou anthropou.*28 “For manifold is that which prevents the apprehending of whatever is as what it is, i.e., both the nondisclosedness (concealment) of what is and the brevity of man’s historical course.”
Need we wonder that Socrates, considering Protagoras’ circumspection, says of him, Eikos mentoi sophon andra me lerein: “We may suppose that he (Protagoras), a sensible man, (in his statement about man as metron) is not simply babbling on.”
The fundamental metaphysical position of Protagoras is only a narrowing down, but that means nonetheless a preserving, of the fundamental position of Heraclitus and Parmenides. Sophism is possible only on the foundation of sophia, i.e., on the foundation of the Greek interpretation of Being as presencing and of truth as unconcealment - an unconcealment that itself remains an essential determination of Being, so that what presences is determined from out of unconcealment and presencing is determined from out of unconcealedness in its particularity. But just how far removed is Descartes from the beginning of Greek thinking, just how different is the interpretation of man that represents him as subject? Precisely because in the concept of the subiectum the coming to presence of Being as experienced by the Greeks - the hypokeisthai of the hypokeimenon - still resounds in the form of a presencing that has become unrecognizable and unquestioned (namely, the presencing of that which lies fixedly before), therefore the essence of the change in fundamental metaphysical position is to be seen from out of that coming to presence of Being.
It is one thing to preserve the horizon of unconcealment that is limited at any given time through the apprehending of what presence (man as metron). It is another to proceed into the unlimited sphere of possible objectification, through the reckoning up of the representable that is accessible to every man and binding for all.
All subjectivism is impossible in Greek sophism, for here man can never be subiectum; he cannot become subiectum because here Being is presencing and truth is unconcealment.
In unconcealment fantasia comes to pass: the coming-into-appearance, as a particular something, of that which presences - for man, who himself presences toward what appears. Man as representing subject, however, “fantasizes,” i.e., he moves in imaginatio, in that his representing imagines, pictures forth, whatever is, as the objective, into the world as picture.
[*27. “As to the gods, I have no means of knowing either that they exist or that they do not exist” (Nahm).
*28. “For many are the obstacles that impede knowledge, both the obscurity of the question and the shortness of human life” (Nahm).]

Hello everyone!
I'm Andrzej, 18M and I come from Poland! I'm a Polish native speaker and I'm able to speak both English and German at approximately C1/C2 level.
I've just started learning Turkish seriously, taking classes and it'd be nice to have someone to practise it with. Same goes for Greek, although I don't have any ambitious plans with it- I'd like to learn some casual phrases to function properly on holiday :)).
If that sounds interesting, send me a message!

Hey to start this off English isn’t my first language and I am well aware of the age difference which is exactly 2.5yrs so its not that serious.
For some background. We started texting on instagram 3 yrs ago. She was with my uni classmate (25F) lets call her Anna at the gym (she also attended the same university but at different faculty) where we saw each other for the first time and then we run to each other few more times, after that she started following me on insta. She was in long term relationship back then and all we talked about was music. Since she is intelligent, beautiful and listens to heavy metal as I do, I was smitten and also loved that we have some common ground.
She is also tattoo artist and pretty good at that I must admit - and I am pretty heavily tattooed gymrat so I hope you get the picture. She aint as active as I am but she has many others hobbies and qualities that I adore. (She draw, paint, she is basically heavily artistic person and I can’t help but admire everything she do) but she goes to gym as well and work really hard but body is one of the last thing I see when I look at her to be honest, even though I never seen someone who would measure to her beauty.
Back then we texted occasionally, she flew to a different country for a 3 months and few weeks after that, she broken up with her then bf and moved out. We met few times at some uni event and at one hockey play between our university vs another one we were with Anna and her bf- he is coincidentally my best friend (I attended just because I knew she would be there and I also think that Anna tried to get us together) we talked for a bit but she didn’t pay much attention to me.
I was disappointed because I thought we had chemistry through the texts and I wanted to explore that a little bit but Anna later told me that she was freshly out of relationship (probably month or two I don’t remember) so she were distant.
The next day she texted me and apologized for her behavior which wasn’t bad or anything she was just distant.
So we agreed on a hike together. She aint as active but she managed to keep up with me - I was pretty surprised, we talked a lot and it was all just easy and fun. Then I invited her to one of the underground concert of one of the metal band we listens to and until then I adored her, I thought about her as one of my close friends even though we actively talked just for a half a year at that point.
But then I saw her at the pit she got a nosebleed because someone pushed her harder and she smiled widely and said that if it aint broken it doesn’t matter. That was the moment - half of her face was covered in blood and she smiled with excitement from the concert and I fell for her… hard. For the rest of the show I protected her with my own body I couldn’t help it.
We gradually spend more and more time together, after a month from the concert I tried to hint that I might have some feelings for her but she pushed it down with “you don’t know me well enough” or that “you will get over it in a few days” she laughed it off and then I learned that it was habit of hers since she turned down a lot of guys with those phrases but I decided to be president. She often joked that I am the hottest men she knows and my future gf is the luckiest (that ofc bothered me endlessly but also gave me hope since I knew she was attracted to me). After a few more moths of spending more and more time together she opened up to me and told me she has a bipolar disorder (she is treated and take medication, she is really responsible with all of that) and she doesn’t think anyone deserves to suffer her existence by being in relationship with her (I don’t have to say I would give everything to take that place)
After a whole year and a half of talkin I decided that she just need some more time and I will definitely be there when she is ready. She hates when someone randomly hugs her or touch her (unless she is tattooing) so she lets other be in her personal space or touch her if she truly feels safe and trust the other person. I think its one of the most adorable things and I love that she is constantly leaning against me and touches me on her own and I of course couldn’t help bur reciprocate.
Neither of us smoke, drink or anything like that but recently Anna celebrated her 25th birthday and we both made an exception. It was really fun night, I wasn’t that drunk that is probably because of my build and she seemed to be tipsy but conscious. We were talking for most of the night and everyone was joking about us getting a room - we weren’t touching or anything but it was obvious that I had a feelings for her - at least to everyone except for her.
She believed that I was over her since I stopped pushing. We drank some more to stay in the right state of mind and when we decided to head to the bed we found out most of the people were asleep or laying in the bed and the only place was fold-out couch, she said she didn’t mind so we laid down still talking about random stuff. We were alone in the room since it was a living room and everyone was upstairs so we didn’t need to shut it. We talked for a few minutes and then decided to get some rest, she automatically snuggled with me and my heartbeat was through the roof, I caressed her hair and it was all so intimate and intense I almost couldn’t breathe.
She kissed me and we ended up sleeping together. I am not sure if it was my long abstinence but I would swear it was the best I ever had. (I asked her several times if she really want to do it and she responded yes every time) I pulled her closer after that and felt asleep, happier than ever, thinking our relationship finally moved.
I woke up alone and Anna told me she - my girl had to leave early since she had some emergency. I felt anxiety all over my body and just from my reaction she asked me what is going on, but I didn’t want anyone to push her or ambush her with unwanted advices and questions. So i brushed her off.
She texted me that night that she needs time to process everything and to give her a time. It’s been a week and I don’t know what to do. We used to text daily and now every passing minute is like a torture, like I was waiting for some trial verdict. I miss her terribly and If I would’ve known it would be like that I wouldn’t touch her. I am lost and I have no one to talk to about it since most of our friends are literally mixed and I really do not want anyone we know into our business. But I really need an advice how to proceed in this situation or what to think about this whole mess. I am feeling absolutely terrible and exhausted in constant anxiety. Everything is so much easier with her by my side that I couldn’t imagine losing her.
TL;DR: I have a strong feeling for my friend for almost 2,5yrs but she is unavailable even though we are extremely close. We slept together for the first time over a week ago at our friends birthday party and she texted me she need time. But I am nervous about her decision and I would like to get some insight and advice what to do

Hey to start this off English isn’t my first language and I am well aware of the age difference which is exactly 2.5yrs so its not that serious.
For some background. We started texting on instagram 3 yrs ago. She was with my uni classmate (25F) lets call her Anna at the gym (she also attended the same university but at different faculty) where we saw each other for the first time and then we run to each other few more times, after that she started following me on insta. She was in long term relationship back then and all we talked about was music. Since she is intelligent, beautiful and listens to heavy metal as I do, I was smitten and also loved that we have some common ground.
She is also tattoo artist and pretty good at that I must admit - and I am pretty heavily tattooed gymrat so I hope you get the picture. She aint as active as I am but she has many others hobbies and qualities that I adore. (She draw, paint, she is basically heavily artistic person and I can’t help but admire everything she do) but she goes to gym as well and work really hard but body is one of the last thing I see when I look at her to be honest, even though I never seen someone who would measure to her beauty.
Back then we texted occasionally, she flew to a different country for a 3 months and few weeks after that, she broken up with her then bf and moved out. We met few times at some uni event and at one hockey play between our university vs another one we were with Anna and her bf- he is coincidentally my best friend (I attended just because I knew she would be there and I also think that Anna tried to get us together) we talked for a bit but she didn’t pay much attention to me.
I was disappointed because I thought we had chemistry through the texts and I wanted to explore that a little bit but Anna later told me that she was freshly out of relationship (probably month or two I don’t remember) so she were distant.
The next day she texted me and apologized for her behavior which wasn’t bad or anything she was just distant.
So we agreed on a hike together. She aint as active but she managed to keep up with me - I was pretty surprised, we talked a lot and it was all just easy and fun. Then I invited her to one of the underground concert of one of the metal band we listens to and until then I adored her, I thought about her as one of my close friends even though we actively talked just for a half a year at that point.
But then I saw her at the pit she got a nosebleed because someone pushed her harder and she smiled widely and said that if it aint broken it doesn’t matter. That was the moment - half of her face was covered in blood and she smiled with excitement from the concert and I fell for her… hard. For the rest of the show I protected her with my own body I couldn’t help it.
We gradually spend more and more time together, after a month from the concert I tried to hint that I might have some feelings for her but she pushed it down with “you don’t know me well enough” or that “you will get over it in a few days” she laughed it off and then I learned that it was habit of hers since she turned down a lot of guys with those phrases but I decided to be president. She often joked that I am the hottest men she knows and my future gf is the luckiest (that ofc bothered me endlessly but also gave me hope since I knew she was attracted to me). After a few more moths of spending more and more time together she opened up to me and told me she has a bipolar disorder (she is treated and take medication, she is really responsible with all of that) and she doesn’t think anyone deserves to suffer her existence by being in relationship with her (I don’t have to say I would give everything to take that place)
After a whole year and a half of talkin I decided that she just need some more time and I will definitely be there when she is ready. She hates when someone randomly hugs her or touch her (unless she is tattooing) so she lets other be in her personal space or touch her if she truly feels safe and trust the other person. I think its one of the most adorable things and I love that she is constantly leaning against me and touches me on her own and I of course couldn’t help bur reciprocate.
Neither of us smoke, drink or anything like that but recently Anna celebrated her 25th birthday and we both made an exception. It was really fun night, I wasn’t that drunk that is probably because of my build and she seemed to be tipsy but conscious. We were talking for most of the night and everyone was joking about us getting a room - we weren’t touching or anything but it was obvious that I had a feelings for her - at least to everyone except for her.
She believed that I was over her since I stopped pushing. We drank some more to stay in the right state of mind and when we decided to head to the bed we found out most of the people were asleep or laying in the bed and the only place was fold-out couch, she said she didn’t mind so we laid down still talking about random stuff. We were alone in the room since it was a living room and everyone was upstairs so we didn’t need to shut it. We talked for a few minutes and then decided to get some rest, she automatically snuggled with me and my heartbeat was through the roof, I caressed her hair and it was all so intimate and intense I almost couldn’t breathe.
She kissed me and we ended up sleeping together. I am not sure if it was my long abstinence but I would swear it was the best I ever had. (I asked her several times if she really want to do it and she responded yes every time) I pulled her closer after that and felt asleep, happier than ever, thinking our relationship finally moved.
I woke up alone and Anna told me she - my girl had to leave early since she had some emergency. I felt anxiety all over my body and just from my reaction she asked me what is going on, but I didn’t want anyone to push her or ambush her with unwanted advices and questions. So i brushed her off.
She texted me that night that she needs time to process everything and to give her a time. It’s been a week and I don’t know what to do. We used to text daily and now every passing minute is like a torture, like I was waiting for some trial verdict. I miss her terribly and If I would’ve known it would be like that I wouldn’t touch her. I am lost and I have no one to talk to about it since most of our friends are literally mixed and I really do not want anyone we know into our business. But I really need an advice how to proceed in this situation or what to think about this whole mess. I am feeling absolutely terrible and exhausted in constant anxiety. Everything is so much easier with her by my side that I couldn’t imagine losing her.
TL;DR: I have a strong feeling for my friend for almost 2,5yrs but she is unavailable even though we are extremely close. We slept together for the first time over a week ago at our friends birthday party and she texted me she need time. But I am nervous about her decision and I would like to get some insight and advice what to do

Lonely Castle in the Mirror, by Mizuki Tsujimura
"Lonely Castle in the Mirror" is a genre-savvy portal fantasy about junior high students who get drawn into a mysterious castle when they're supposed to be in school. Kokoro had a terrible experience early in the school year that's made her terrified of facing her classmates, and develops some kind of (psychosomatic?) illness that prevents her from attending either the normal school or a special alternative school for students who need more support. Shortly after this, her bedroom mirror turns into a portal to the castle with six other students who are also not in school during the normal hours. The "Wolf Queen" in charge--an elementary school girl who enjoys allusions to "Little Red Riding Hood"--tells them all that there's a secret key in the castle that can grant one wish, and they have a year to find it and, potentially, use it. Also, if anyone is caught in the castle outside of the 9-5 school day timeframe, they'll all be eaten by a wolf.
So, these painfully shy students have the opportunity to make friends and have a non-terrifying experience with kids their own age, and they all enjoy bonding and playing video games and drinking tea together, and for the most part nobody cares about finding the key, because that would make the castle close and prematurely end their new friendship. For most of the book, the contrived quest stuff doesn't play into it. And then when it does, it kind of lampshades "oh yeah I have to do this on speedrun mode."
There are a lot of takes pointing out that books where "the magic goes away"/"everyone loses their memories"/"we just have to move on with our lives and pretend like the portal fantasy never happened" can be pretty messed up. In this book, however, I couldn't find myself relating to the characters because it felt like a perverse incentives situation. Yes, middle school is an emotionally volatile, turbulent, unpleasant environment full of many immature people. This is a pretty common experience, actually. Kokoro just can't handle it, and as a response, the infinitely patient teacher at the alternative school reassures her mother that she's battling really hard and it's not her fault, she just can't go to school, and then she gets to go through a portal into fantasy world with people who play video games and eat snacks all day...? I understand there's more to it than that, but something has to change about this situation because otherwise this really isn't the message you want to send. (Once we learn about the backgrounds and life situations of some of the other students, I can imagine how it was easier for people like Subaru and Aki to fall through the cracks, but it feels like, eg, Masamune and Ureshino's junior high situation should have had some kind of guidance counselor or adult in the room. The readers' guide in the back of the book describes Kokoro as a "futoko," and I understand this is more pervasive in Japan than elsewhere, but I have a hard time accepting that seventh graders staying home for months on end with no apparent homeschooling or tutoring gets such a shrug.)
The prose didn't really grab me, sometimes it felt awkward ("That day, Fuka apparently enjoyed the chocolates back home, for she faithfully reported to Kokoro that 'they were delicious.'") and there were a several parts with very. short. one. line. paragraphs.

Kokoro tried to convince herself that she hadn't been at home that day. Miori and the others had simply pounded on the door of an empty house, trampled over the patio, gone round and round over outside of the house. But nothing actually happened. Nothing at all. She never was about to be killed. And yet the next day, she said, "I have a stomachache." And she really did. It was no lie. And her mother chimed in: "You do look pale. Are you OK?" And that's when Kokoro stopped going to school.

A few paragraphs later:

Would she be able to protect herself?
The only place she could now go to freely from her bedroom was the castle.
If I'm in the castle, she started to think, then I'll be safe.
Only the castle beyond the mirror could offer her complete protection.

Girl, I know your mental health isn't the greatest, but we're talking about the place where people threatened you with being eaten alive by a wolf. ??? Sorry, my suspension of belief does not extend this far.
There's also a random red herring with a neighbor student whose father has an interest in researching fairy tales, and like, maybe that "real world" location/characters are related in some way to the portal world? No, it's just a fortuitous coincidence that helps Kokoro have access to more Western fairy tale info.
The good news is, about halfway through the characters start developing some genre-savviness and realizing what they have in common, and towards the end, things pick up significantly in terms of how and why some of the arbitrary fairy-tale logic came about. So it definitely sticks the landing in that way.
Bingo: Prologue/Epilogue, Author of Color, Book Club
Promise of the Flame, by Sylvia Louise Engdahl
At the end of "Stewards of the Flame," to which this book is a sequel, our heroes Jesse, Carla, and Peter had hijacked a spaceship and jumped to an uninhabited planet to set up a colony where humans could develop psionic powers free from the medical bureaucracy of Undine. Jesse's hyperspace jump was rushed and not perfectly calculated, so in order to ensure their oxygen supply makes it all the way to planet Maclairn (named after their late founder), the Group had to confront their deepest fear and brave the stasis boxes that had been Chekhov-gunned several times in the last section. As the existence of the sequel implies, the protagonists and most of their comrades survive stasis. But while, in "Stewards," the hyperspace navigation "error"/imperfection sets up the Group's ultimate test, here it casts a long shadow as Jesse keeps wondering, "could we have picked a better landing site if I hadn't screwed it up?"
The early days on Maclairn are a struggle. The first part of the book is a recurring cycle of "should we do things this way or that way? Well, we came here to set up a society fully founded on mind powers, we pretty much have to commit to the bit or else what's the point." Repeat ad infinitum. Later, this broadens somewhat to "we have to have psi powers coexist with modern technology to fulfill Ian [Maclairn]'s dream, otherwise what's the point." There are clear parallels to (Engdahl's older trilogy) "Children of the Star"; that society represents the endpoint if they go down a path of giving up on modern technology--and the burdens of agrarian, high-population-growth societies fall disproportionately on women. If "Stewards" had motifs of baptism, this is more of an Exodus story, with the characters sulking about "why did you bring us out of Undine just to starve in the wilderness, at least there we had enough to eat." "My God, came Carla’s thought, we’re homesick! Homesick for Undine! I never admitted that to myself, it was so foolish, I’d wanted so much to leave . . . I guess I just pushed it down inside, into a place I didn’t dare go. . . ."
The consequences of the hyperspace jump being off are a minor tonal retcon/change in perspective on the events of the first book. A more significant one, to me, involves love triangle dynamics. In "Stewards," we learn that Carla and Peter both previously had spouses who died under the authoritarian Undine government. Fortunately, Jesse shows up just when Carla is ready to love again, and their relationship brings him into the Group and thus enables their escape from Undine. "Promise" adds that Peter has been silently pining for Carla all along, but needed Jesse's starship skills too much to say anything. We're told the Group's adult recruits skew slightly female, but that isn't represented among the main characters, and you're telling me that none of them are Peter's type? All three of them sigh and angst about "oh, we're such great friends, we can't let this love triangle come between us," and at times it feels like it's setting up for a polygamy plotline (they're all highly powerful telepaths, they can't keep secrets from each other!) And then it just...goes nowhere. As in the first book, I can accept that sex is probably great among telepaths; I can't buy that every single person has to have sex in order to fully level up their telepathic sensitivity!
The best parts of "Promise" involve the culture clashes between Jesse, who grew up on Earth; the rest of the adult Group members, from Undine; and the Maclairn-born generation. Undine's environment is so tightly regulated, they don't even have insects or lizards, so the planet's "collective unconsciousness" doesn't have a fear of creepy-crawlies; Jesse's initial revulsion risks "contaminating" the psyche until everyone faces their fear.

“Horror vids involving animal life aren’t permitted on colony worlds,” Peter told him. “Haven’t you ever wondered why starship libraries don’t contain any? Earth has always banned their export as a measure to protect extraterrestrial lifeforms. It’s one of the few government trade regulations I think is wise.” Of course, Jesse realized. The average Earth citizen’s reaction would have been to kill the crawlies—if possible, to exterminate them. That hadn’t occurred to anyone yesterday. And horror vids often portrayed even intelligent aliens as repulsive; what kind of precedent would that set if similar ones were ever encountered?
Traditionally, said the knowledgebase, small farmers had chopped chickens’ heads off with a hatchet. Wringing their necks was said to be more humane, but nobody wanted to experiment on live, squawking chickens despite the specific instructions provided. These warned that the hardest part, in the physical sense, would be catching a grown chicken in the first place—a fact soon borne out by experience, as chickens are not devoid of telepathic sensitivity and the pursuers were unconsciously broadcasting their intent to kill.
Kel, like many of the Group’s other children, had been slow in learning to talk. It had taken awhile before it dawned on the adults that this was because the kids’ telepathic bonds with their parents had been so strongly encouraged that they felt no need to communicate vocally. Speech could not be allowed to die out in a psi-based culture; it was essential not only to reading but to the framing and communication of complex ideas. Now, everyone realized that like the skills for volitional control of the body, telepathic conveyance of concepts, as distinguished from emotions, must wait until the kids were older.

On the other hand, the scope of "this is dangerous, but we must, to commit to the psionic bit" and "well, we've come through a lot of tough situations before, but this time really is the end...jk never mind we got out of it" got repetitive. There was one scene towards the end where it's like "okay, we're almost done, I can see how telepathy might be used to enable a permanent self-sacrifice...nope, we're still going, huh," and even though some of the resolutions were nice callbacks/tying up foreshadowing, it was still a lot.
Like in James P. Hogan's "Voyage to Yesteryear," the kids who were raised outside of Earth and Undine's prejudices are, overall, a great step forward for humankind, but there can be some values dissonance. In both cases, the desire for lots of population growth leads to a much lower age of consent than Earthlings are used to. Justified somewhat more in Maclairn's case; telepathy means almost everyone wouldn't fathom hurting each other and of course sex is consensual, as well as amazing. On the other hand, in both cases, there's no prison infrastructure; if someone is determined to be evil and is posing a grave threat to others, you just have to kill them. "Promise" gets a little more philosophical about the problem of evil--if it's not nature and it's not nurture, what causes it? Free will? Sure, but it seems as if some people are also evil from day one even if their DNA is just fine.
There are a couple shoutouts to Lord of the Rings and Star Trek that fit in nicely. I found "it's just like using the Force, you know, like in that old vid, Star Wars" to be more of a distraction. Similarly, Engdahl's commitment to showing her work ("in the twentieth century on Earth, you know, people experimented with remote viewing!") got to be a distraction. But the exploration of "okay, let's try a rain dance, even if it fails we're learning something and pushing knowledge forward" was a great use of the "sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" trope, which is what I come to Engdahl for anyway.
Some people, like Peter, tend to believe in an afterlife; others, like Jesse, are more skeptical. Earth religions don't transfer well to other planets because the interstellar gap is too big for the collective unconsciousness to bridge. Despite this, characters use the word "God" (like in a telepathic context of "Carla . . . oh, God, Carla, answer me!") approximately 144 times. Do you have no one else's name to take in vain???
Criticisms aside, I do think that this is less heavy-handed than "Stewards" and at least as good a starting point!
Bingo: Dreams, Prologues/Epilogues, Self-Published, Survival. One prominent character acquires a physical disability midway through the story. Jesse and Peter's Criminal record on Undine is not very important (since the entire book is set on or around Maclairn), but it becomes more prominent in the last section.
The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, by Shannon Chakraborty
Once upon a time (1100s Indian Ocean) there was a notorious nakhudha (pirate captain) named Amina al-Sirafi. Ten years ago, she retired, and now she's a single mom with a bad knee and a leaky roof. However, a wealthy noblewoman who believes her granddaughter has been kidnapped by a Western European would-be sorcerer insists on having Amina rescue her, never mind Amina's own family responsibilities. So Amina has to put the band back together, staying one step ahead of the authorities while getting to the bottom of the mystery.
Amina and her crew are likable rogues. I found this easier to get into than Chakraborty's "City of Brass". That book focused more on a long-term conflict between two factions, neither of whom consistently seem like the "good guys"; maybe that's supposed to be sending a message about RL actually works, but I found it confusing at times. In contrast, the early sections of "Amina" are about tracking down individual allies, from a gay smuggler stuck in a prison in Aden, to a navigator and family man in Mogadishu, while researching the notorious Falco Palamenestra and speculating what he might be up to.
At first, Amina's Muslim identity comes through more in the ways characters talk, and some level of monster-fighting exorcism (like Catholicism in some horror movies), than actual practice. But gradually, we see more of how she's struggled to be a parent in her post-pirate life:

If the criminal past didn’t alert you, I have not always been a very good Muslim. Drinking and missing prayer were among my lesser sins, and if I tried to straighten myself up every year when Ramadan rolled around—a new life of piety easy to imagine while dazed with thirst and caught up in the communal joy of taraweeh—I typically lapsed into my usual behavior by the time the month of Shawwal had ended.
But then Marjana was born. And Asif was . . . lost. And if one of these events made me feel as though I had no right to ever call upon God again, the other filled with me a driving need I could not deny. So I keep my daily prayers, even if I feel unworthy the entire time.

To me, this rang true as a depiction of a complicated, realistic, person of faith.
This is a time and place that I knew very little about. For instance, one plotline involves the island of Socotra, an island off the coast of Somalia which is today part of Yemen. There are caves there with graffiti from sailors going back thousands of years, in Indian and Greek and Ethiopic scripts. This is a real place! I would not have been able to tell you anything about it before reading this book! So Chakraborty's vivid descriptions of places this, and of the diverse cultures and religious backgrounds of pirates who live and work alongside each other, is compelling. There's a danger in this as a reader, though, in that getting too caught up in the "worldbuilding" of the actual world can make it feel like its "foreignness" is what makes it speculative and fantastical, which is obviously inaccurate and beside the point. That's one reason why jumping in at the deep end with an honest-to-goodness sea monster in chapter one might have been a good choice, to remind us that there really are otherworldly things happening.
The themes of "rich people love to jerk poor people around" and "the male gaze sucks" are clear, but there's lots of quippy banter mixed in.

“That was you, was it not? The woman who poisoned the soldiers at the wali’s office, freed a crew of homicidal pirates, set a score of ships on fire, and fled the harbor in the middle of the night?” “I would never confirm such a thing and put you at risk of consorting with criminals. But it was two ships, not a score. I wouldn’t wish to encourage exaggeration.”
Sailing past its ancient breakwater—the stones said to have been set there by giants—you might feel as though you have entered a mythical port of magic from a sailor’s yarn. You would be sorely mistaken. Aden is where magic goes to be crushed by the muhtasib’s weights, and if wonder could be calculated, this city would require an ordinance taxing it.
“She knows you are a pirate?” “I am not a pirate,” Majed huffed. “I am a cartographer with a checkered past.” “Yes. A checkered past of piracy.”

The book contains a few chapters that are "in-universe documentation" or chronicles of the places and people in the main narrative. This is a trope I really enjoy at times. However, in this case, I didn't feel it added much, beyond underscoring the themes that "men feel threatened by powerful women, oh no."
The biggest issue for me was how all the diverse, sympathetic characters just kind of went along with developments that felt more reminiscent of 2020s Tumblr idiolect than 1100s Indian Ocean. How fortuitously convenient! (At least it got a Hugo nom.)
Smaller quibbles: the timeframe with Amina in her forties is appeSaling to the extent that it's a story about a working mother trying to follow her own dreams while also desperately missing her kid. But in order to make that work, the narrative sometimes withholds a lot of important information about the tragedies in Amina's past/her relationship with her child's father until it can be brought forward for dramatic effect, and it made me wonder what a story from the younger Amina's POV would look like without the artificial suspense problem.
More broadly, I felt like the second half's pace wasn't as crisp as the first--there's a dramatic near-death experience, then a bunch of fantastical creatures are introduced in quick succession as if to make up for the "worldbuilding via the actual world" stuff earlier, then we get a very contrived in-universe sequel hook, then we double back to a setting that had already been introduced. Whereas the first part was "we need to go to A to do B and then that gives us a clue that leads us to C."
Who wore it better?

“It is invalid!” I burst out. “Our nikah. It is not permissible for me to marry a non-Muslim.” Raksh frowned. “Is that why the man had me say all those words about God and prophets?” He returned to studying the contract. “Trust me, dear wife, I can be a vast number of things.” “But—but you are not a believer.” “Of course I am. Best to know the competition, yes?”

Compare "Alif the Unseen" (which is one of my favorites and I suspect I probably was harsh on "City of Brass" by comparison):

"But I told him I couldn't marry him even if I wanted to, because I can't marry an unbeliever. And he laughed and said he'd been a believer, 'for a the better part of a thousand years,' I believe were the exact words." "What?" said Alif. "Vikram? Vikram the madman who bites people?" "He might be those things," said the convert hastily, "but did you ever know him to do or say anything really blasphemous?" "I guess not."

Bingo: Alliterative Title, Criminals, Dreams, Reference Materials, Readalong! It's planned to be First in a Series but the sequels aren't out yet. (Statistics from last year just came out and this was the most popular book across all 2023 bingo cards, with ~200 reads!)
Spinning Silver, by Naomi Novik
When I read "Uprooted" and griped about the implausible romance and/or reactive plot, people's reactions were "try Spinning Silver, it's an improvement in some of those ways." And yeah, it is! I was aware that Spinning Silver was set in the same world as Uprooted, ~1700s Eastern Europe but with some fantasy elements, and that it was based on Rumplestiltskin.
But it's a lot more than a simple retelling. "Spinning Silver" teases out the individual trope elements of Rumplestiltskin--a mercenary father trying to get his daughter to marry up, the dead mother looming over the plot, a woman given the impossible task of making gold out of other elements, terrible bargains, aloof and unknowable beings from the fae world, the power of knowing someone's true name, the horror of a mother trading her child to inhuman creatures--and blows them all up, turning them inside-out, and creating something original.
It also does a lot with POV. For the first chunk, we have two young women from a small town who go back and forth telling the stories of their business dealings. But as the book goes on, we start jumping into more and more people's heads, and everyone's voice is very different. Sometimes this can be used for dramatic irony; we hear what character A thinks of their interaction with B, then we jump back and tell the same scene from B's POV and what was going through their head is very different than what A assumes. Once in a while, this makes the plot drag--there's a couple of scenes towards the end where we can't have any suspense about "oh no, will they find what they're looking for" because we've just seen the corresponding scene from another POV, and it would have been more effective to rearrange them--but overall, things are propelled forward much more intriguingly than "Uprooted."
Our POV characters are:

• Miryem, the daughter of the village moneylender. Miryem's family is Jewish, which means her father is one of the few people socially permitted to work as a moneylender--but he's more interested in currying favor with the neighbors than getting his debts repaid, so his family goes hungry. Miryem steps up, grows "cold" and "wintry," and takes on his job, to her parents' horror. But an offhand remark about "look, I can turn silver into gold" (metaphorically, because of, you know, capitalism) inadvertently catches the ear of the "Staryk," monstrous elven raiders who live in a parallel realm.
• Wanda, the daughter of an abusive alcoholic. Miryem is like "he can't pay off his debt because he's drunk everything away, I'll have them repay me by hiring Wanda to assist me with our work, I know this is cold and ruthless but I have to." Then when we see it from Wanda's POV she's like "you're giving me money to be out of the house and away from my father? And you'll even feed me? What an undeserved kindness!" Her reaction to "learning to manipulate numbers and do arithmetic is an amazing kind of magic!" felt cheesy and over-the-top, but the contrast between the literal phrasing of a royal decree and the way she "translates" it was more convincing.
• Irina, the daughter of the duke of Vysnia (Vilnius, Lithuania). Like Wanda, her mother is dead and her father is trying to arrange the most profitable marriage for her, never mind what she wants. When Miryem is compelled to turn magical Staryk silver into gold, she does so by having an acquaintance forge silver jewelry which the duke purchases--so when the gold takes on magical powers in the Staryk world, so does the silver with Irina, and brings her to the attention of a tsar. Despite her cold relationship with her father, she learns a lot from him and is a true politician, adept as anyone at cutting deals to keep her realm safe.
• Stepon, Wanda's younger brother. His narration is very simple and childlike (amazing cold open with "I like goats because I know what they will do.") It's possible he has some kind of sensory/mental health issues, or it's possible he's just eleven and overstimulated by unfamiliar crowds.
• Magreta, Irina's nurse/caretaker. She can be kind and supportive, but her casual antisemitism provides a contrast to how Miryem is treated by the villagers.
• Mirnatius, the tsar. For a while we mostly see him through Irina's POV ("this guy is so full of himself he requires a new outfit every day, that's no way to manage the economy"), but again, his narration provides a very different perspective on what's going on.

So I said the romance was better than "Uprooted," in that we didn't have the implausible "elderly magician berates young woman all the time but also they can't keep their hands off each other." In "Spinning Silver," both {Miryem and the Staryk king} and {Irina and Mirnatius} are paired off without much say-so on anybody's part, it's being manipulated by magic/higher-ups. So the timeframe of the book is mostly them all learning how to tolerate each other, and the romance is kind of left to your imagination in the future era.
The Staryk magic is kind of like...you can see their roads briefly if they make incursions in the human world, but as soon as they've disappeared, you start forgetting them and it really takes effort to remember. This means that if someone, like Miryem, disappears into the Staryk world, she's forgotten almost immediately except for little irregularities that don't seem right. These depictions were well-done. (Except that I was trying to remember if the Staryk were the same as the [jerk, mundane human] aristocrats in "Uprooted." They're not. I think I was half-remembering "Marek," the creepy prince, instead of "Staryk," the winter elves.)
There's a cool liminal space that sets up back-and-forth "communication" between the human and Staryk realms, and again, the multiple POVs are a good framework for this. On the other hand, there are some things, like, why do the Staryk want human gold, that are kind of chalked up to "magic idk" and not completely spelled out; for some of the confrontations at the end, again, it's better not to worry too much about hard magic systems and just go with the vibes. There's also an earlier plot that definitely plays the trope of "the less the audience knows about the plan, the more likely it is to succeed" trope straight.
Especially early on, it can be a very bleak "everyone sucks here" setting. Wanda and Stepon's father is horrific. Irina's father is mercenary and sets her up with Mirnatius, a dandy who abuses animals for fun. Nobody in the village respects Miryem's family, and when she tries to reclaim what she's due, her parents are horrified. The Staryk raid the village and carry off women and demand impossible tasks. There's a lot of "I have my wife to murder and Guilder to frame for it" coming from all sides. Even though the plot is moving forward, it's hard to feel like there's anything to root for.
But cracks of light shine through. Miryem's mother, and her mother, defy the "dead moms" trope, and are able to be loving parental figures to Wanda, Stepon, and their brother Sergey. Miryem's grandfather is wise and conscientious, warning her of the risks that some of her choices pose not only to their family but to the Vysnia Jewish community as a whole, but still recognizing she's mature enough to make her own choices. They even make use of a real-world Jewish blessing for the first blossoming of trees in the spring. Even when people are trying to be cold, sometimes they're just too human!
Bingo: Alliterative Title, Under the Surface (not for most of the plot, but there is a secret tunnel that gets use), Multi-POV (and how!)
The Infinite Arena (edited by Terry Carr)
Anthology of SF short stories about sports, stumbled upon while browsing a used bookstore. I like sports and the first one was based on "Casey at the Bat," so okay, sold.
It's from 1977, and the stories were originally published in the 40s-70s timeframe. The sex ratio among writers appears to be nine men, zero women, which is pretty "impressive" considering there are only seven stories. Three of them are installments from series that feature the same recurring character(s), so maybe that explains some of the...paucity? I don't want to say they're "flat" or "shallow" or anything, most of the contemporary "deep" stuff isn't to my taste either, but it feels like there's "no 'there' there" for several of these. In some cases, it's like, "we have to raise the stakes by involving gambling/someone's fate being on the line"; in others, it's looking for parallels between sports and other aspects of life (warfare? weird alien insects?) that provide the impetus for two plots to intertwine.
-Joy in Mudville (Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson)--very impressionable and earnest teddy-bear-like alien species imprints on humans, and immediately become obsessed with baseball. One of the aliens names himself Mighty Casey, but unfortunately, opponents can rattle him by reminding him of how "Casey at the Bat" turned out. Fortunately, what poetry can break, poetry can also fix...

"You untentacled mammal! raged Ush Karuza. "You sslimeless conformation of bored flesh!" Alex had long ago discovered that mankind rarely reacts to insults couched in nonhuman terms. It did not offend him at all to be told that he was slimeless.

-Bullard Reflects (Malcolm Jameson)--Dazzle Dart is a sport played by bouncing light rays around with reflective gear and aiming for a goal at the opponents' end. Like American football, one team is designated on offense at a time, and the other is on defense, but you can "intercept" and score from on defense. In Dazzle Dart, this is worth bonus points. Except instead of normal goals and "turnover" goals being worth one and two points respectively, it's twenty-five and fifty. And you thought Quidditch was silly. (This is from 1941.)
-The Body Builders (Keith Laumer)--the best of the stories, in my opinion, in that it predicts both technological advancement and the social changes that will ensue in a clever way.

So it's a little artificial maybe--but what about the Orggies, riding around in custom-built cars that are nothing but substitute personalities, wearing padded shoulders, contact lenses, hearing aids, false teeth, cosmetics, elevator shoes, rugs to cover their bald domes? If you're going to wear false eyelashes, why not false eyes? Instead of a nose bob, why not bob the whole face? At least a fellow wearing a Servo is honest about it, which is more than you can say for an Orggie doll in a foam-rubber bra--not that Julie needed any help in that department.

-The Great Kladnar Race (Robert Silverberg and Randall Garrett)--bored humans on an alien planet try introducing something like horse races that they can bet on. However, the aliens' concepts of sports and competition and betting don't necessarily align with the humans'.
-Mr. Meek Plays Polo (Clifford D. Simak)--guy who has only seen one space polo game in his life somehow accidentally stumbles into being the "expert" space polo coach, oops. Also there are weird alien bugs that are great at computation (a little like "The Circle").
-Sunjammer (Arthur C. Clarke, whose name is spelled wrong on the front cover)--a solar flare interrupts a solar sailboat race. Felt timely given the storm of a few days ago! (I did not get to see the aurora, alas.)
-Run to Starlight (George R. R. Martin)--short and slow but extremely muscular aliens enter an American football league and crush everyone, metaphorically and literally. However, the aliens' concepts of sports and competition don't necessarily align with the humans'. Too bad he never wrote anything else ;)
Bingo: 5+ short stories.

Back in December my bff and I went to get tattoos together. We got the same design in the same place: simple lettering of our favorite phrase, except I had him tattoo mine a little bigger than hers, thinking it would be better for longevity. We were given the same aftercare instructions which, it being my first tattoo, I followed religiously: washed 4-5x a day with anti bac soap and moisturized for 3 weeks with the sample goo from the shop (Recovery salve), & gel for the last 3. The letters on my tat have faded slightly but are still pretty black.
Hers is now blurry and the lettering is grey/melding into each other. She has a few other tattoos in illustrative style and we were noticing how much they tend to fade on her skin; on one, the features of a face are completely gone after just over a year. She follows the aftercare given by the first artist who tatted her; wash and moisturize the tattoo after showers (usually 2x a day). She moisturizes with unscented lotion after 3 days with second skin on.
Why do our tattoos look so different? Does ink retain better in some peoples skin than others?

Hi,
Could anyone help me translate the following for a tattoo please?
The phrase ‘the last word’ or if there is no ‘the’ could it just be ‘last word’.
Or any alternative are… ‘to say the last word’ ‘to have the last word’
Thanks!

I am Orthodox, and for the past few weeks i started to look into Catholicism, not necesarly to convert but more to be informed. I have a few arguments agains it, if y'all can solve them then i will consider converying altho very unlikely.
1) Filioque. Starting with a well known and classic one, the Pope should have not been allowed to add the Filioque in the Niceno-Constantinopolitan (i think that is how you spell it) creed without an Ecumenical Council, as said in the other Ecumenical Councils.
2) All the power to the Pope. I see this as a bad thing, if the Pope is without error, how did bad Popes exist? Wouldnt God help you choose a good Pope? This one is pretty weak, i will still add it tho 🤷‍♂️.
3) Inconsistentcy in the Church. If the Catholic Church is one, then how do Eastern Catholic belive thing very different than the RC? And dont Eastern Catholics venerate St. Palamas, the RCC belives he was a heretic from what i remember because of his teaching about:
4) The Divine Energy and Essence. In greek Ousia and Energeia, things Easter Catholics belive in. If you dont belive in it, a dangerous teaching can sprout out of it. If God has the Ousia and Energeia in one "thing", the phrase "God is love" can be changed to "love is love" as "God is God". If you have the Ousia and Energeia you can say the "God is love" as in the Energeia is love, it is God after all. And it can also lead to a heresy. We belive in theosis as in we become God-like, Energeia-like and not Ousia-like as Ousia can never be understand by humans. If you dont have the distinction, you can get the conclusion that theosis means becoming God as some Protestants do.
5) Vatican II. If you had the perfect Church, founded by Christ Himself, why did you need to make a reform in mass? The mass would have been already perfect, why would you change it?
I will end it here, already pretty long. God bless!

Long time viewer of the channel, been watching since 2011 or 2012. Never been active on twitch or this reddit, just a youtube viewer.
So I suffer from pretty severe depression. The height of which was about 2018 when I was the most suicidal. One of the phrases Ryan said during the period of, I want to say 2013-2014 is the phrase, "Life goes on." Usually remarked when he picked up a bad item in his Isaac run.
Every time I got super close to giving in I breathed through the tears and fear and repeated to myself that phrase. "Life goes on." It bought me enough time to crawl out of that feeling to return to a more stable mind. Through out the years it has greatly affected me and I have been able to get medication after some trials and errors to where I much rarely have those thoughts.
They still happen, and when they do I repeat those simple three words. "Life goes on." I plan on getting that phrase as a tattoo eventually because it means so much to me. No one in my life has ever said it before. So if it wasnt for NL I very well might be dead.
So I just wanted to give my thanks to him. Idk if he will see it. Hope he does because while I get the social disconnect from creator and viewer. He does make a profound impact on individuals in wonderful ways.
Thank you Ryan Letourneau. You saved my life accidentally.

• Evelo_Grave

(I know my account is OkSalt. Idk how to change it. I think I missed a deadline when I made the account.)
Edit: Thank you for all the kind words. I am pogging out of my gourd.

Feel like I should put this in here: TRIGGER WARNING: this story talks about assault, cancer, threats, and violence.
I 28F have been married to my husband Andy 30M for 3 years but we’ve been tg for 5 years total. Before I met him he was with my stepsons, Olli 9M, mom Claire 32F for a month before she got pregnant with Olli One month after Olli was born they amicably split and arranged a custody agreement that allows Olli to choose which parents he wants to be with that day. When Andy and I got together, Olli had just turned 4 and quickly bonded with me to the point he would scream and cry when I had to leave. Depending on who had Olli that night would sometimes have to call FaceTime me at random times during the night because he missed me and wouldn’t go to sleep until he seen me. I also got extremely close with Claire too. Claire was just happy that Andy found someone that treats their son like their own and that Ollie is so close with me and feels safe with me. Claire and Andy used to always joke that if I’m around, Olli forgets all about them and that he might just love me more than them. Obviously a joke but My MIL Bea 56F would get angry over the jokes and would say that she thought they were extremely inappropriate because according to her “Olli would never choose anyone over his grams and it’s gross to even joke about it since Olli loves me more than any random ho3 that you would find on the street.” Bea obviously didn’t liked me due to her jealousy over how Olli wanting me more than her. Sadly, Bea hated Claire and loved to tell people just how much she hated her. its always bothered me how Bea would say awful things about Claire in front of others however she would say especially heinous things about her to Olli. I remember the first time Olli repeated what Bea had said about Claire. Me, Olli and Andy were at an ice cream shop when Olli looked up at us and said “did you know that my mommy is a nasty whre?” Both of us were shocked and asked him who told him that. He happily replied with “gram told me, she said it would make my mommy happy if I called her that.” That evening I asked Andy if he wanted to get an apartment with me since at the time he couldn’t afford to live alone and it was obvious we needed to get him and that baby out of Bea’s house. We found an apartment 3 days later and were completely moved in about 3 weeks later. Bea’s jealousy got worse during this time, it got to the point where we had to go NC with her 2 months after we moved in. However it was obvious everyone including Olli and Claire started thriving a lot better without the negativity. After one year, Andy and I planned a cute little wedding and only invited people that meant the most to us, Claire was my maid of honor while Olli got to be the ring bearer and Andys best man, we obviously didn’t invite Bea or even let her know about the wedding. Olli got to read a speech he wrote, before Andy and I read our vows, his speech made everyone cry and he even said “OP, I’m so happy that you get to be my second mommy. I love you and thank you daddy for choosing to marry her.” It was the best speech I’ve ever heard and I’m so glad I get to be his bonus mom! Andy and I ended up welcoming 2 little girls into our family, Ellie 2F and Kat 4moths. Andy and I also were able to buy a house before Ellie was born that has 5 bedrooms 3 bathrooms so now all 3 kiddos get their own room and Claire also gets the spare room whenever Olli or I want her over or if she just wants to stay. somehow 2 months ago Bea found out where we live and put a letter in our mailbox saying she was very sorry for how she acted years ago, that someone had told her that she now has 2 more grandkids and about our wedding. Bea said it broke her heart to miss out on so much because of her actions. She said that she was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer and was given a year to live and wanted back into our lives before it was too late. I could tell Andy was hurt and asked me what I thought he should do, I told him that he should do whatever he thinks is right and that I’d support him. However if she was to be in our lives again we had set clear boundaries with her and if we need to make it clear that she doesn’t even have an inch of wiggle room to try and “test the waters”the first time she crosses a boundary, any progress that we made with her will be lost. Andy completely agreed and said that he now realizes that the way she acted years ago negatively impacted Olli and it took Claire, Andy and I almost a year to break him of some of the negative things she taught him. He expressed to me that he was really nervous about letting her back in, he said he’s afraid that if he lets her in and she screws up it could be 3 kids we are having to unteach bad habits and behaviors to and that with olli being older now, he might not be able to unteach those behaviors as easily because he remembers a whole lot more now than he did back then. Which was absolutely true, so we made a plan that for a little while visits would only happen once MAYBE twice in a week depending on whats going on with the kids and she would not be allowed alone with the kids for a very long time. Bea started doing visits only once a week for a max of 2 hours each visit, eventually we actually felt comfortable allowing her to have visits at least 3 times a week. I actually didn’t mind. She seemed like a whole new person. she was kind, never spoke a negative word around us, she was always offering to help with dishes, dinner, the kids laundry etc. she still wasn’t allowed to be completely alone with the kids but we did feel comfortable leaving her alone with them in the living room while we went to other rooms in the house, plus we have our daughters owlet camera hung on the wall in there. She spent most of her time with the kids. The kids were really starting to adore her and was able to feel comfortable around her after the first couple weeks. She was also kind towards Claire too, she was even giving her compliments instead of bullying her. That’s actually a huge change compared to how she would talk about her before we went NC. We were actually starting to trust her and agreed that she was truthful about changing. Until what she did yesterday. I was going to get both my daughter’s names tattooed on my left shoulder blade with a key that would go before the name and right below that I would do the same for my youngest. We were in the back yard when Andy told Claire about my tattoo idea. Olli heard the conversation and said he wanted really wanted his name to be tattooed on me too along with his sisters. Claire smiled and asked Andy if he was okay with it, he said yes as long as she was. She said “honestly if that’s what my child wants and OP is comfortable with it I am perfectly okay with it. She told Ollie to ask me if I was okay with it, and told him “if she says no or if she says she isn’t comfortable with it this time but maybe later on, then you can’t get upset with her. A tattoo is something permanent that stays on you for the rest of your life” he told his mom that he understands, then he asked me if I wanted to do it and I told him I would love to. he was so excited, he gave me a big hug and said thank you. Later that evening after the kids went to bed the three of us did set down and discuss it. I wanted to make sure they were 100% comfortable with it and they weren’t just agreeing because Olli really wanted it. And they wanted to ask me the same. That was a long, emotional conversation that I won’t be putting into this post however for the sake of what happened with Bea yesterday and earlier today I do want to add one thing Claire had said to me. “Op, you are his mother when he’s with you and I’m not around. Even when I am around you are still his mother. I tell all of my family, friends and even coworkers about you and how you have treated Olli as your own since the first day Olli and I met you. Also you have been nothing but kind to me all these years, you have gotten me through my darkest moments. You are more than my best friend. You’re my sister. I know that if something ever happens to me, you would always make sure Olli had you no matter what. So I absolutely feel comfortable with you doing this.” I know it was a little long but you’ll see why I added it in soon. The next day I got the tattoo. When I got home Andy, Ollie and Bea were in the living room as well as my daughters. Andy and Ollie asked if they could see it, of course I showed it to them. they both loved it. Ollie was so excited to see his name at the top since I did it from the oldest to youngest. Bea asked what was going on, Ollie said “look what op did grams! My name is at the top. I’m with my sisters!” While he showed Bea. She gasped and he asked if she liked it. Bea started screaming at Ollie that he doesn’t love me. He loves her and only her just like his dad. Andy and I were about to lay into her for speaking to him like that as tears were forming in poor Ollies eyes, however before we could react Bea grabbed a hold of me and began to shake me pretty violently while calling me the most awful things a human could possibly think to call someone. Andy immediately intervened but I yelled and told him that he needed to take the kids to another room. I don’t exactly remember a lot of what happened during that altercation for some reason, I didn’t hit my head or nothing so I don’t know why there’s spaces of time missing from my memory of what happened. Actually, I only remember the beginning and what happened when she let me go. I do know I was able to free my left arm from her and I did hit her. I remember her hitting the floor when I hit her and her staring to call me names again, however Andy came running back in and when she seen him she started screaming like those videos you see in a store of an entitled woman screaming and saying she was a$$aulted even though no one ever touched her. Yeah it went down exactly like that. She looked at him and asked him what he was going to do about me hitting her emphasizing that she is his mother and saying the phrase “mommy always comes first. No relationship you have will ever be as important as the one between a boy and his mommy” I know she repeated that phrase a few times. He just stared at her and said “you’re right mom. Let’s go.” He helped her up and they walked to the front door. I was literally so stunned at the fact he was really about to choose that psycho knowing she put hands on me first and also broke his sons heart. Andy said that when he was walking to the door I started laughing so hard I was crying, I don’t remember that but sounds about right. Only response my brain deemed necessary for the literal mayhem that was happening. I do remember her saying “keep laughing btch just wait until youre out in the street and my baby moves me in a I raise your kids” however when she stepped out the door Andy told her to never try to contact him or his family again and that she was dead to him and slammed the door in her face. She tried banging on the door but he said that she had 30 seconds to get off our property or she was going to have to get her chemo treatments wearing a nasty orange jumpsuit while cuffed to the chair. She didn’t knock anymore lol. He asked me if I was okay and checked me over. Then we went to the kids and apologized to them, and told them that we will always keep them safe and they had nothing to worry about. Claire stayed the night with us, she took the girls in her room for the night so I could rest. I asked Andy why he took 5 minutes to get back to me, he said he didn’t. He watched the footage from our camera in the living room, he said the entire altercation lasted 54 seconds when I hit her and she let me go. Is that normal? I’ve never spaced out on time like that or even blocked out memories like this. I didn’t watch the video, Andy didn’t want me to anyways and didn’t really want to go through the altercation again. I didn’t get much sleep last night due to the anxiety of the situation and I kept having awful dreams, not even about what happened but they were still awful none the less. I’m mentally and physically exhausted. Both of my arms also have full hand print bruises on them, they are so sore. It’s hard to even hold my baby Kat. All I want to do is lay here in this bed and be away from everyone. I know that sounds awful but it seems like I am going through some sort of depression. I don’t know why. I do want to add because I know people are going to think I’m crazy letting an old lady get me like that but I am 4’9 and 100lbs. Bea is 5’7 and around 290lbs last I heard when she was talking about it a couple weeks ago. Thats a pretty big size difference lol. Especially when an angry person is so tall I gotta look up like I’m looking at the Eiffel Tower. To make it worse Bea made a long FB post lying about the entire situation.Here’s a little part of what she put in the post that already has over 200 shares. This is a paragraph that I have copied and pasted so this is exactly what she posted only edits made were me changing the names of me and my family:“Ops been telling my grandson Ollie awful things about his mom Claire!! fFor years she has doNe this I’m tired of trying to please her and letting her get away with EVIL. You may ask why would she do this to olli and Claire???? They were so close!! They did everything together!! I can’t believe she would do this to Claire!!!!! Here’s gods truth the only truth that matters\ OP is trying to make Ollie hate Claire so he doesnt want anything to do with her so she can play perfect little princesss mommy to him and life in her perfect fantasy world she created in her mind. yesterday she came in dressed like she just finished walking the streets looking for a John if you know whyt I’m talcing about!!!! She was nasty enough showed all of us a tattoo of Ollies name on her body. Op said Claire never really loved Ollie since she wouldn’t make that sort of sacrifice for him!!! Said it right IN FWONT OF MY BABY!!! I felt horrible for Claire. You could tell she was trying hard to keep quiet so not make it worse. So I tried to stand up for but OP got visibly ANGRY GRRR and screamed at me. Op ACTUALLYN to hit me in the face and push me out side. The last thing she said before slamning the door in my face was that she would maKE sure I never see my son or granDCchildren again. I’m beside myself. Who has advice for what I should do???? PLEASE” I’m sorry you had to see those spelling errors. However claire was literally at work when this went down. And anyone who knows me knows I’m not big enough to push her across my living room and out of my door. Now im getting lots of messages from people saying awful things to me and about me. Threatening me, and my daughters because according to one person who messaged me when I asked why bring up my innocent daughters in this this is what I received: “they came from you so they got to go too your lucky if they don’t start walking the street like you do before they turn 12” How is this okay??? I’m so sick because of this. I think she also gave out my address bc there has been 4 people so far that have drove by our house either yelling obscenities as they drive by or throwing stuff at our home. Andy and Claire have made separate posts posting proof of her lies. Unfortunately, it seemed like the only way to prove that she’s lying was for both of them to post the video with time stamps and audio and Claire posting proof of her being at work at the time. Some of the stuff seemed to die down after that and people are starting to turn on Bea since she started all this and lied her butt off. However, Some people are still saying that it didn’t matter if Ollie’s parents were okay with it, I still shouldn’t have done it because its still disrespectful and that if they were Andy they would leave me and take the kids and if they were Claire they’d make sure the tattoo wouldn’t be recognizable anymore. Yes Claire and Andy both posted a couple things we talked about in the conversation about the tattoo. Some of the things being said is really making me question myself and I’m really starting to worry that maybe people are right and Claire will end up resenting me? Or that even though they wanted me to as long as I was okay with it is it still disrespectful? AITAH?

I don't know if this is the correct place to ask this, but I've noticed that many academics utilised the term Palestine for the the southern part of the Levant. I only really noticed the weird phrasing whole skimming the The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Daily Life in Roman Palestine. For someone just now getting to Assyriology books that cover the region of Palestine, that book read a bit weird and forceful, like Palestinian Jewish Leadership and similar phrases. It seems the equivalent of saying Sargon the Great is an Iraqi or Alexandre the Great was a Greek. Like, the regions these guys come from are now Iraq and Greece respectively, but they are usually credited as an Akkadian and a Macedonian.
To be fair, I don't know if I'm a uninformed person and this is normal or a convention the sprung up. It could also be that the modern State of Israel-Native Palestinian conflict looms large enough to engulf my think and that I'm being unreasonable. I have other books like Jewish Leadership in Roman Palestine, The Ancient Churches and Synagogues of Palestine and others which are in my reading list so I'd like to know.
Please help.

Greetings. I am trying to make a gift for a friend, who is very interested in Greece. Unfortunately, I do not speak a single word of Greek.
Could someone please help me translate the phrase "Welcome to the deep end of the pool."? Its an inside joke, but the basic meaning is, this is where things get tough.