BC CULTURE
Saved by @ThomassRichards



In “A Few Good Men”, a 1992 film by Rob Reiner, Base Commander Colonel Nathan Jessup (Jack Nicholson) tells Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Daniel Kaffee (Tom Cruise) in a defining moment of the film: “You can’t handle the

 2/In the film the truth ultimately prevails. Jessup confesses he ordered the “code red” and is arrested while Dawson and Downey are acquitted of the charges of murdering Santiago. However truth often doesn’t win the day on the great stage of life on which we are but the actors.
3/In a material and political world, truth can become the enemy of those in power. The truth about suffering led Siddhartha Gautama to leave his palace and princely inheritance to become the Buddha. The truth about Jesus Christ led to his crucifixion.
https://t.co/h45Xp6avLp
4/There is the truth about reality, and there is propaganda designed to keep people from knowing the truth. It’s the quest of the truth seeker to determine which is which.
5/“Shakespeare stated and I quote,”The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be the fool” the natural tendency of humans is not to face themselves and not to see who they really are- but knowing who you are gives you the strength to manage your weakness.””
6/In the journey of life I’ve stumbled, tripped and fallen only to find myself taking to the path of the truth seeker which helps me understand life on a deeper level as well as myself. Arriving to truth also brings lies, deceit & falsehood into clarity.
https://t.co/g7Y0SahLPp
7/This said, the truth is that North Korea’s education system is better than the US’s, and their teachers are more dedicated to teaching their students than unionized American school teachers, who demand that schools remain closed during COVID while they continue getting paid.
8/DPR Korea's Free Education System - On the International Day of Education on Jan 24
https://t.co/ZfX2DtNeMJ
[Published on Jan 25, 2021]
Fully Provided with the Right to Education - On the International Day of Education
January 24 is the International Day of Education. It was
9/“instituted at the 44th Plenary Meeting of the 73rd Session of the UN General Assembly held in December 2018 with the aim of providing the people with full rights to education and strengthening the international cooperation for equal, comprehensive and qualitative education.”
10/Patrick Maurus and Pierre-Olivier Francois are truth seekers.

Have Fun in Pyongyang

Life in North Korea | DW Documentary
https://t.co/CpewL1wue9
[Published on Mar 1, 2020]
“Are people in North Korea allowed to laugh, dance and marry? This documentary provides unique insights
11/“on everyday life in the East Asian country, which most people associate with dictatorship, military parades and nuclear missile testing.”
12/The truth is that Music Clubs in US schools would be hard pressed to match the exuberance these North Korean high school students have in learning music, their instruments and singing.
https://t.co/nXZf9VCSkJ
13/The material world is a twisted reflection of the spiritual world. In an ideal justice system wrongdoing and wrongdoers are nailed to a cross.

[“nail to a cross

nail (one) to a cross

To punish, berate, or hurt one in a very severe fashion for a wrongdoing or transgression”]
14/Yet we live in a political world where the truth itself gets nailed to a cross when it gets in the way of the powerful maintaining their grip on power. A US military industrial complex that profits from war denies millions of people from the peace they deserve, long overdue.
15/Power attempts to keep the people ignorant of the truth by peddling whatever false narratives serve to forward their political agendas, which devolves into propaganda the people consume thru MSM or government/state controlled media.
16/It makes you wonder about the state of affairs b/t the US and North Korea: Are we the “good guys” and they the “bad guys”? Or is it the other way around? DPRK, a “shrimp among whales”, needs nuclear deterrence just to survive, yet like a bully the superpower US demands Kim
17/Jong Un fully denuclearize. How would President Biden react if Russia or China demanded we give them our nuclear stockpile? The DPRK Music Club students👆& all North Korean students, parents, teachers & workers feel safer b/c KJU has built up their defense against US! The US!
18/The country that makes life miserable for North Koreans thru sanctions, pressure policy and unfair demands. The US signed an Armistice meant to end the War and bring peace to all Koreans, North and South. North Koreans still want peace and Americans won’t give it. So are “we”
19/the “good guys”? Maybe at this stage, in 2021, the North Koreans - a nuclear underdog beset by an unruly US superpower acting more like a Goliath - are the “good guys”.

What is the truth?

As a truth seeker I cant draw conclusions for you I might have drawn for myself. I will
20/tho encourage one to be a truth seeker. However that could run afoul w/ the material & political powers that be who wish to suppress the truth and replace it instead w/ a false narrative.

When I see these North Koreans 👇celebrating New Year’s Eve 2020
https://t.co/Wgi33bcdNk
21/(opening scene) filled w/ as much joy as citizens in other countries, I know that North Korea is nowhere close to its maligned characterization pushed by the US, Western media, UN Security Council. I see people happier being North Korean than US citizens are at being American.
@threadreaderapp compile

More from Culture

Jo Luehmann
Jo Luehmann
@JoLuehmann
I am going to say something very uncomfortable. Read before you react please.

Purity culture encourages pedophilia, a thread:

Purity culture encourages pedophilia.

Some of the standards of purity culture are innocence (pretty much ignorance about sex), submission (for women), virginity as the ultimate standard, and “modesty” (for women that is wearing clothes that don’t reveal their adult curves)*
1/

Purity culture makes the desirable standard a child. It makes child likeness desirable in regards to sexuality. It makes virginity, and innocence, and submission; what the male brain should want most in a partner. And your brain doesn’t rewire just because you get married.
2/

This doesn’t mean every man raised in purity culture is a pedophile, that’s not what I am saying. What I am saying is that purity culture wires the brain of men to desire child likeness, which encourages pedophilia. After all desire and objectification happen in our brain.

3/

Now if you are a pedophile who wants to act on those desires, purity culture does a lot of the grooming for you. Purity culture discourages comprehensive sex education leaving children without the ability to know what’s appropriate and what’s not.

4/
CULTURE
Brian The Great
Brian The Great
@BrianTh37895972
All warfare is based on deception.

Everybody assuming Trump hasn't been working furiously behinds the scenes to affect certain outcomes were wrong.

They based their assumption Trump doing nothing & just hoping for the best on the surface of things.

As they were supposed to.
CULTURE
Advertisement
Rob Henderson
Rob Henderson
@robkhenderson
Best books I read in 2020

1. Atomic Habits by @JamesClear

“If you show up at the gym 5 days in a row—even for 2 minutes—you're casting votes for your new identity. You’re not worried about getting in shape. Youre focused on becoming the type of person who doesn’t miss workouts”


Good Reasons for Bad Feelings

https://t.co/KZDqte19nG

2. “social anxiety is overwhelmingly common. Natural selection shaped us to care enormously what other people think..We constantly monitor how much others value us..Low self-esteem is a signal to try harder to please others”


The True Believer by Eric Hoffer

https://t.co/uZT4kdhzvZ

“Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all unifying agents...Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without a believe in a devil.”


Grandstanding

https://t.co/4Of58AZUj8

"if politics becomes a morality pageant, then the contestants have an incentive to keep problems intact...politics becomes a forum to show off moral qualities...people will be dedicated to activism for its own sake, as a vehicle to preen"


Warriors and Worriers by Joyce Benenson

https://t.co/yLC4eGHEd4

“Across diverse cultures, a man who lives in the house with another man’s children is about 60 times more likely than the biological father to kill those children.”
CULTURE
Ferris Jabr
Ferris Jabr
@ferrisjabr
A thread of very good, wonderful, truly Super Bowls.

Translucent agate bowl with ornamental grooves and coffee-and-cream marbling. Found near Qift in southern Egypt. 300 - 1,000 BC. 📷 Getty Museum https://t.co/W1HfQZIG2V


Technicolor dreambowl, found in a grave near Zadar on Croatia's Dalmatian Coast. Made by melding and winding thin bars of glass, each adulterated with different minerals to get different colors. 1st century AD. 📷 Zadar Museum of Ancient Glass https://t.co/H9VfNrXKQK


100,000-year-old abalone shells used to mix red ocher, marrow, charcoal, and water into a colorful paste. Possibly the oldest artist's palettes ever discovered. Blombos Cave, South Africa. 📷https://t.co/0fMeYlOsXG


Reed basket bowl with shell and feather ornaments. Possibly from the Southern Pomo or Lake Miwok cultures. Found in Santa Barbara, CA, circa 1770. 📷 British Museum https://t.co/F4Ix0mXAu6


Wooden bowl with concentric circles and rounded rim, most likely made of umbrella thorn acacia (Vachellia/Acacia tortilis). Qumran. 1st Century BCE. 📷 https://t.co/XZCw67Ho03
CULTURE
Julie Bindel
Julie Bindel
@bindelj
THREAD @ReadingsBooks now 'regret' the apology. This is from @TimesLucy in the Times today (can't find online link): Bookshop forced to apologise for feminist's visit in 2018
The Times (London)

February 11, 2021 Thursday

"A bookshop in Australia has apologised for "any hurt

caused" by an event it hosted three years ago with the feminist campaigner Julie Bindel.

Readings, an independent bookseller in Melbourne, is to host an event on Zoom with Juno Dawson, a transgender author, and Alison Evans, a nonbinary author, on February 25. Transrights

supporters have long accused Bindel of transphobia because she does not believe trans women are women.

Evans, an award-winning author from Melbourne who writes queer sci-fi for young adults, tweeted on Monday: "I agreed to do this event providing Readings publicly apologise for

hosting Julie Bindel. Where is this apology?"

The next day the bookshop said: "Readings prides itself on ensuring everyone in our community feels safe, respected and considered. We apologise for any hurt caused by highlighting the work of an author whose current stance is to

divide our community.

"To that end, Readings regrets programming Julie Bindel in 2018 and thanks our community for opening the dialogue with us. Readings is committed to considering the work of all authors to ensure our future programme of events, reviews and discussions remain
CULTURE

You May Also Like

Noah Smith
Noah Smith
@Noahpinion
1/OK, data mystery time.

This New York Times feature shows China with a Gini Index of less than 30, which would make it more equal than Canada, France, or the Netherlands. https://t.co/g3Sv6DZTDE

That's weird. Income inequality in China is legendary.

Let's check this number.

2/The New York Times cites the World Bank's recent report, "Fair Progress? Economic Mobility across Generations Around the World".

The report is available here:

3/The World Bank report has a graph in which it appears to show the same value for China's Gini - under 0.3.

The graph cites the World Development Indicators as its source for the income inequality data.


4/The World Development Indicators are available at the World Bank's website.

Here's the Gini index: https://t.co/MvylQzpX6A

It looks as if the latest estimate for China's Gini is 42.2.

That estimate is from 2012.

5/A Gini of 42.2 would put China in the same neighborhood as the U.S., whose Gini was estimated at 41 in 2013.

I can't find the <30 number anywhere. The only other estimate in the tables for China is from 2008, when it was estimated at 42.8.
SOCIETY
Anu Satheesh
Anu Satheesh
@AnuSatheesh5
Thrikkangode Sree Randu Moorthy Temple
Ottappalam, Kerala. 🚩
#keralatemples

This is very unique temple as Shiva and Vishnu both are in the “linga” form in the same Garbhagriham. The Srikovil is in a circular pattern. Temple's Prathishta was done by Parasurama.


Mahadeva and Maha Vishnu in the same Srikovil is very rare Prathishta, but poojas are done separately Dhara is done to Maha Vishnu here. People suffering from “KAIVISHAM” and mental illness are fully cured on drinking a medicinal herb supplied by a nearby family here.


The root of the banyan tree around the Ayyappa Sannidhanam is said to have great powers for skin ailments.

Very ancient temple but was covered with forest for many years.
Later two persons Chakki and Chaathan, while cutting trees their axe hit on the nearby
@SriramKannan77


Vigrahams and it suddenly started bleeding. Later Devaprashnam was held and thus found out that these were murthy's of Shiva and Vishnu which was worshipped long back. And thus temple is constructed here.
Om Namah Sivaye
Om Namo Narayanaya
🕉🙏🕉
ALL
Advertisement
Anshul Pandey
Anshul Pandey
@Anshulspiritual
STORY OF PURANAS AND SUB PURANA (उप पुराण).

We have already gone through the series on importance & characteristics of all the eighteen Purans. We also know that originally there were hundred crore shlokas but were divided by Vyas in each Kalp and was compiled as eighteen Purans


for the common people to understand it properly and now their total is about four lakhs.

In Brahm Puran, Brahma preached this to Marichi. So this Puran of ten thousand shlokas is called Brahm Puran.

In Padma Puran, the base of the story is the appearance of Brahma on a lotus(Padm) from Vishnu' s navel.This has fifty five thousand shlokas.

Vishnu Puran is primarily based in Varah kalp. This book is on Vishnu and this book has twenty three thousand shlokas.

Vaayu Puran is written in Shwet Kalp and has twenty four thousand shlokas. Here Vayudev preaches about Dharma.

In Bhagwat Puran, which is written with the base of Gayatri mantra describes Dharma extensively. It has 18000 shlokas. It also mentions the story of Vritrasur.

In Narad Puran, which has twenty five thousand shlokas, is a sermon on Dharma by Narad based in Brihad Kalp.

Markandeya Puran has nine thousand shlokas and here it is through the birds that Dharma is described.
RELIGION
Vibhu Vashisth
Vibhu Vashisth
@VIBHU_Tweet
THE LESSER KNOWN MAHARANA OF MEWAR:RANA KUMBHA
Kumbalgarh Fort is one of most spectacular sites of India,atop a hill abt 3600ft above sea lvl in the https://t.co/LkjmzzBhE2's second largest wall is surrounding it.A fort wall second only to Great wall of China,still not so famous.


This longest wall of India stretches to almost 36Km and encompasses a few hills, many step wells and over 360 temples and palaces. Birth place of the Great Maharana Pratap, this fort is named after another Great Maharana of Mewar, who is not given his due in the History.


Builder of many architectural marvels like the Kumbhalgarh Fort, an erudite scholar, a patron of arts, music, culture & a great warrior was the Great Maharana Kumbha. Yet we don't know much about him. Let's get to know him a little.


Maharana Kumbha was the undefeated King of Mewar from 1433-1468CE.He never lost any battles &kept Mewar out of the reach of Islamic Invaders till the time he was alive. Born on Makar Sakranti to Maharana Mokal & Saubhagya Devi, Rana Kumbha was only 13 when he ascended the throne.


His father was killed by his own relatives in a political conspiracy. He was a powerful King about 8ft tall &charismatic personality,a hardcore Hindu Rajput who could shed his life for Hindu honour without thinking twice.He was an ardent skillful warrior who never lost a battle.
ALL
Anshul Pandey
Anshul Pandey
@Anshulspiritual
SHAKTA DHARMA AND THEIR ACHARYAS

Śhākta or Shakti or Devi pooja is not a new upasana. It is being carried out right from the time of Vedic period. Puran's tell us that Rishi Vashishth would worship Tara devi. Parshuram ji worshipped Tripura devi,


Agastya learned the secrets of Shri Vidya from Vishnu ji in Hayagriva avtaar. Bhagwan Ram, Laxman and Krishna too learned the tantrik vidya. Even Rig Ved 7.103.5 Sayan Bhasya also mentions about Śhākta/शाक्त(शाक्तस्येव शक्तिमतः).

Then we find that in the Harrappan excavations many figurines depicting Shakti were found. So in that age too, which was supposedly an urban city shakti was being worshipped. So naturally this tradition would be prevalent in rural areas too.

It is wrong to say that shakti puja originated from Bengal although it was popular there. Matsyendranath received this vidya from Maheshwari herself in Kamrup. We know that Shakti pooja is practised all over India.

Not much is known about the Śhākta saints in other parts of India in the middle ages.

Adi Shankaracharya wrote Pramanech saar named book on tantra and Anand lahri book on Devi strotras. Then there were Acharya Shankar, Bhaskar Rai, Laxman, Deshikendra, Raghav Bhatt, Krishnand,
ALL