Last night I was chewing on the idea of a book which was nonfiction fiction. That is, a historical text about a fictional world. 'A history of the peoples of the Farundak continent' or something similar. Telling a broad and long history of this fictional continent, the politics and people of it, etc. But not delving into deep fictional storytelling on any of the events.
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I am hating the growing trend of YouTubers using stock video footage simply to have a cut in their video.
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You can now buy me a coffee
Without any real goal, I have started a 'Buy Me a Coffee' should any readers feel inclined to support my writing. I don't drink coffee, so I need to modify the "Buy me a [blank]" to something else. I currently have it as 'Buy me a book' but I'm not sure if that is what I want it to be.
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Supreme Court rules in favor of anti-same sex marriage web designer
I know many aren't surprised by the ruling, and I'm not either.
The dispute was one of several to land before the justices in the wake of its 2015 landmark decision establishing the right to same-sex marriage that raised the question of whether a business owner can refuse service to LGBTQ customers because of their religious beliefs.
In 2018, the high court sided with a Colorado baker who was sued after he refused to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding, but did not address whether a business can deny services to LGBTQ people. Instead, the Supreme Court said the state's Civil Rights Commission was hostile to baker Jack Phillips' religious beliefs in violation of the First Amendment.
In the years after, the Supreme Court declined to clarify whether states could force religious business owners to create messages that violate their conscience. But the court's rightward shift, solidified by former President Donald Trump's appointment of three justices, raised concerns that the Supreme Court would erode LGBTQ rights by allowing businesses to deny services to LGBTQ customers.
For full transparency, I edited the above to correct a typo from the news article. It originally said, "LGBTQ peple" which I feel confident is meant to be "LGBTQ people."
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"Biden Says He’ll Try Another Way to Cancel Student Debt"
This news is significant because, for years, debt cancellation advocates have pushed the administration to use the Higher Education Act (HEA), the 1965 law that governs federal student loans, to cancel student debt. Biden's initial student debt cancellation plan relied on a different law, the George W. Bush-era HEROES Act, to issue sweeping cancellation, but Friday's Supreme Court ruling closed off that route.
As I wrote last year, some of the earliest champions for cancellation, including the Debt Collective and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), have made the case that the HEA presents the best legal option for canceling debt. They've maintained that the portion of the law called "compromise and settlement authority" gives the Education Department carte blanche to tweak or even throw out its claims against borrowers. (Notably, the Debt Collective expressed skepticism on Twitter about the administration's planned use of the HEA because it doesn't implement relief automatically.)
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"The Radical Theology of Mr. Rogers"
This is from the Substack of Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg. I've followed her on various social media and just came across her Substack. As an ardent fan of Mister Rogers, this was a good read and interesting to delve into the religious underpinning of his drive for bettering the world for children.
Fred Rogers was a Presbyterian minister whose life's work was, I believe, built almost entirely (if not entirely) around Leviticus 19:18:
"Love your neighbor as yourself: I am God."
Hence... the neighborhood.
In practice it that looked like this (all of these are his words):
"To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way [they are], right here and now."
and
"Everyone longs to be loved. And the greatest thing we can do is to let people know that they are loved and capable of loving."
Rogers' love of love was so intense that his favorite number was famously 143—since it corresponded to the number of letters in each word of "I love you." In fact, a few years ago his home state of Pennsylvania declared the 143rd day of the year—May 23rd—to be "143 Day," a day of kindness "inspired by PA's favorite neighbor."
"Love is like infinity: You can't have more or less infinity, and you can't compare two things to see if they're 'equally infinite.' Infinity just is, and that's the way I think love is, too," Rev. Fred Rogers
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Automated Archives for June, 30th 2023
This post was automatically generated (well, mostly. Something in the automation is broken. So I'm manually implementing it from the script the following morning.)
Wallabag Additions
These are articles that which I saved today so that I may read them later. Substance and quality will vary drastically.
Blog Posts On This Day
- 2021-06-30 (2 posts)
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