Categories Society
This year I want to get personal about my unexpected journey from ardent atheism to faith that shook the foundations of my life and changed it forever.
Merry Christmas!
— Brent Beshore (@BrentBeshore) December 25, 2019
Today, my family and billions of others celebrate the birth of a poor refugee who taught for three years, died disgracefully, and changed the world forever.
If you\u2019re confused by Jesus, as I was for a considerable time, I\u2019d encourage you to study him. pic.twitter.com/6GimdnZS1c
Everyone's journey is different and if what I'm getting ready to say seems ridiculous, I get it. 10 years ago I would have said the same thing, and probably less tactfully.
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From a young age, I’ve been curious about the big questions.
Why am I here? What’s the point?
I can vividly remember sitting in vacation bible school as a young kid thinking all this talk of Jesus and His blood made no sense.
But, everyone else seemed to be into it and they had tasty snacks, so I might as well roll with it.
At 9, I told my mom I didn’t believe in God. We were driving by Carl Richard's bowling alley in Joplin, MO. My little brother in the back seat started crying.
On the topic of faith, I'd say I finished high school confused but curious.
I took religion classes in college, all of which were taught by atheists or agnostics.
As I started law school, I became obsessed with money and achievement. I got into reading “new atheist” authors and quickly adopted their condescending views of religion and faith.
I do *not* fuck with pimps.
I do not like pimps.
I think that they are generally scum.
But they probably don’t operate like how you imagine.
I feel like so many people don\u2019t know what a pimp actually is, like, in the real world, and that lack of understanding is often harmful to sex workers.
— \u2728Jessica Starling\u2728 (@J3ssicaStarling) December 24, 2020
Would anyone be interested in an educational thread based on my and other ppls experiences?
First, I wanna address the cultural conception of the “pimp”
This conception is based in white supremacy
It is a black and/or foreign man, who kidnaps little white girls and sells their innocence against their will with violence
This is what you’ve been told is a “pimp”
I need you to delete this from your brain because this caricature of white supremacist fear of physically and sexually aggressive black men does not exist
The first person in the sex industry who tried to be my “pimp” was a skinny 30 year old white woman who was also a stripper.
There’s a reason anti-SW orgs push the imagery of evil non-white men as pimps
I also need everyone to know 99.9999% of pimps are not in the business of kidnapping people and locking them in a hotel room against their will to service customers.
I can’t say it never ever ever ever could happen, but, the VAST majority of the time, it is not that
Just finished a deeply personal & educating private conversation with @GregoryMcKelvey. We both are committed to doing & being better in regards to ourselves & those around us. I thank him for taking the time to reach out, for us to learn from each other, & to open a dialogue.
— \U0001f384\u2744\ufe0f\U0001f941 Lil Drummer Boi \U0001f941\u2744\ufe0f\U0001f384 (@SwooshMcDuck) December 29, 2020
1. I was blocked by @pinwheelempire around 3 years ago. Something that actually really hurt as a life long Blazers fan. I thought it was because I tweeted stupid stuff about Stotts as a passionate fan during that playoffs that I don’t currently believe.
2. At some point I asked why and was informed by multiple people that the account was ran by a cop and that many media members disliked him. This was told to me many times by many people. I then believed that my race, and my public protesting of police was why I was blocked.
3. I do not work with police in any capacity because of personal trauma and historical oppression. I believe people should know when they are interacting with police. I also was/am salty about the block as a life long fan. I am still blocked.
4. Periodically I would tweet reminders that the account was ran by a cop, which I believed. Although part of my incentive was that I was hurt by the block as a fan. Recently I tweeted such a reminder which I believed especially pertinent given the current uprising.
These data have been affected by the Boxing Day and New Year’s Day bank holidays, and should be treated with caution.
The provisional number of deaths registered in England and Wales in the week ending 8 January 2021 (Week 1) was 17,751.
This was 7,682 more than Week 53.
Please note: this sharp increase may be because of the New Year Bank Holiday https://t.co/hfjsArBUyM
In the week ending 8 January, the provisional number of deaths registered was 45.8% (5,576 deaths) above the five-year average.
This increase should be treated with caution because of the bank holidays
Of the 17,751 deaths registered in Week 1, 6,057 mentioned #COVID19 on the death certificate (34.1% of all deaths).
This has risen by 2,913 #COVID19 deaths since the previous week https://t.co/i7g7eFBN8z
Of the 6,057 deaths involving #COVID19, 88.6% had this recorded as the underlying cause of death.
Of the 4,649 deaths involving influenza and pneumonia, 8.2% had these as the underlying cause
A text search shows the words "Christian","evangelical","fundamentalist" are absent...
Marjorie Taylor Greene approved of executing Dems, yet she'll get little to no punishment. But the story here is much bigger: GOP failure to police extremists goes back half a century.
— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) January 28, 2021
\u201cThe dictum now is \u2018No enemies to the right,'" @RuleandRuin tells me:https://t.co/DTlzGomy5h
Consider the context - back on January 6th, protestors gathered in small groups on the Mall, and called upon their deity to consecrate what they were about to do. Then, in a howling mob, attacked the Capitol Building. Once inside the House chamber, they consecrated it to Jesus.
Now, let's walk it back a couple of years. In early 2017, I thought to myself, "OK, this is gonna be kind of predictable, but I'm going to look into the radical evangelicals flooding into the new Trump Administration."
See, I knew that would happen. It was transactional...
4) Trump cut a deal w/the evangelicals, along the lines of "vote me in, and I'll let your people do whatever the hell they want to do in my administration."
And it was so. In early 2017 I wrote this:
5) I was, to my knowledge, the 1st to write about this phenomenon, Ralph Drollinger's in-house theocratic bible study for Trump's cabinet.
Over the next few years, covering Drollinger's thingy become quite a media cottage industry. Predictably, none of the pieces mentioned mine