Category Archives: Immortality

The fantasy began to consume me at the turn of the millennium.

Id always felt like a half-being, a cyborg of incompatible substances: gringa daughter of a Puerto Rican MD and a long-unemployed Mexican man with addiction issues. Native or alien. Nerd or rebel. I was white and not white but thought I had to choose.

No wonder, then, that the greatest ambition of my youth was to achieve digital immortality, or uploading my mind to the metaverse. Goodbye, flawed body. Hello, god-self.

Opinion Columnist

Jean Guerrero

Jean Guerrero is the author, most recently, of Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump and the White Nationalist Agenda.

A playful interaction with my father in the 1990s had primed me. He was showing me the Macintosh Plus, our first computer: a beige box with a rainbow apple logo. Papi guided my hands over the keyboard, causing me to poke one letter of my name at a time until there I was in the box: j-e-a-n. He clicked file, save, X, and my name disappeared. It frightened me. Papi turned off the computer, ignoring my protests. Watch, he said. He powered it back on and clicked through folders. Suddenly, there I was again, resurrected: j-e-a-n.

Inside the apple box, I could live forever.

The fantasys premise, which Id contemplate in later years, was that I was reducible to code: 0s and 1s. This view of life and data as interchangeable spread long before social media.

At USC in 1988, two philosophy students launched the journal Extropy. The opposite concept, entropy, is a law of physics: The universe tends toward chaos. Extropians saw this disorder as the supreme enemy. Their journal, whose contributors were overwhelmingly white and male, nurtured a cult of technology-worshiping immortality seekers.

They were early transhumanists, the pseudo-intellectual offspring of eugenicists, with their hubristic quest to breed a master race and all of its consequent horrors: from the Holocaust to the forced sterilization of tens of thousands of people, mostly women of color and others labeled defective. Eugenicists thought there was such a thing as a perfect body; transhumanists went a step further to say perfection lay in select minds, which could transcend bodies altogether.

Transhumanists preach that a command of technology can liberate humans from the limits of mortal flesh. Human destiny is to leave our puny Earth and colonize the stars. Extropians argued that this agenda required rejecting morality, which could interfere with the rapid expansion of technologies that might, oops, destroy the Earth. (No biggie when the goal is infinity!)

In the early 90s, Wired magazine glamorized the Extropian cultists as hard-partying, psychonautic intellectuals. Slowly, transhumanism grew into a global movement now trending with some of the worlds most powerful people, including the richest, Elon Musk. Its twin cult is longtermism, which says we should prioritize positively impacting humanity in the faraway future: not just in the next few generations, but thousands or millions of generations from today. That philosophy also has Musks support and that of others such as Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and cryptocurrency billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, a top Biden donor.

Ultimately, this isnt about biological humans. The father of longtermism, Nick Bostrom, a transhumanist and Oxford philosophy professor, has been trying to push into the mainstream the idea that the futures hypothetical digital people matter more than the billions of humans alive today because there will be at least 1058 of them. Thats a 1 followed by 58 zeroes the number of human simulations he calculates we could run using the stars computing power.

The New York Times, the New Yorker and other media have given longtermism fawning coverage this year with little or no mention of its deranged core. The global fad and media frenzy are almost understandable at this moment in history. It truly is hard to watch: climate change, war, migration crises, economic instability, political regression into nativism, fascism and dictatorships. Its not science fiction but current events that inspire the quest for an escape path from planet Earth.

Longtermism is often framed as a way to protect Earth. But its architects care less about ecosystems than about making sure nothing stops humanity from reaching what Bostrom calls technological maturity. Thats a nice way of characterizing that moment when people turn into bits.

Last year, mile P. Torres, a philosopher who studies existential threats and has extensively investigated longtermism, warned that the traction longtermism is gaining makes it the most dangerous secular belief system in the world today.

Leading longtermists have arrived at abhorrent conclusions, such as that philanthropy should focus on saving and improving wealthy peoples lives more than poor peoples because thats a more direct way to ensure the innovation needed to launch us into space.

Douglas Rushkoff, author of Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires, argues that the only way to reduce carbon emissions and salvage the Earth is to reduce consumption. Longtermism is a way for [tech giants] to justify not looking back at the devastation theyre leaving in their wake, he told me. Its a way for them to say it doesnt matter all the damage Im doing now because its for a future where humans will be in the galaxies.

Whether its Musks plan to colonize Mars or Mark Zuckerbergs promise of a Metaverse, these billionaires visions of escape via more industrial tools, more mass-produced technologies, can be seductive. At least Icarus hubris cost only his own life.

As a preteen, Id never heard of the transhumanists, the longtermists or the Extropians. But their early members were pumping propaganda into the culture, including the possibility of escaping our human forms, which they depicted as weak, vulnerable, stupid. This perspective infected me at a time when I was frightened of my body of its origins and its uncertain future.

The chaos and doom that Extropians and their heirs saw in the Earth and its mortal vessels, I sensed in myself. Years later, when I heard Musk talking on a podcast about human bodies as hideous sacks of meat that we must ditch for robot encasements, I remembered my teen self and the pain I harbored. The tech supremacists promised a clean escape. I wanted one.

I thought I couldnt possibly matter as much as what those men might make out of me.

::

In the early 2000s, I spent hundreds of hours trying to upload my mind to the web. Id sit at our computer in the evenings by this time a stylish blue iMac G3 and type every detail I could recall of the past 24 hours into a blog. I believed if I captured enough of my thoughts and experiences online, eventually some kindly engineer, long after my death, might revive me in the form of an algorithm. Id be immortal.

It was a teen girls techno-futurist fantasy, a twist on the Snow White fairy tale. I imagined nature as the poisoned fruit; the engineer was my savior. But the real poison was the fantasy.

For years, I was reckless with my body. I swallowed dangerous pills and pursued relationships with violent men. There were highs in all of that. Like the transhumanists, I came to believe that humans contain value only insofar as they experience pleasure, high intellect and other properties as defined by thinkers almost exclusively white and male.

For a time, I suspected Id inherited something from my father, who abandoned us amid a deluge of his own abnormal thoughts that my mother called schizophrenia. In studying neuroscience at USC, I caught a glimpse of myself in The Divided Self, a psychiatry classic. In it, R.D. Laing argues that the root of mental illness lies in mind-body dualism, which splits self from others. [The] body is felt as the core of a false self, which a detached, disembodied, inner, true self looks on at a divorce of self from body deprives the unembodied self from direct participation in any aspect of the life of the world.

I was watching myself as I maneuvered my body toward risks. I wasnt her. I was the mind.

Or so I thought. That escape from the self and the present is the false promise of longtermism. It was never true.

My journey to regain my sense of my body was long and circuitous. I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder in my 20s after a near-death experience in a drug cartel zone that I was touring for adrenaline. I developed an autoimmune condition in my 30s. My body, by revolting against my abuse, guided me back to it.

Other people, by caring about me in the depths of my self-destruction, taught me empathy for my embodied self: yes, I am a mind, but I am also belly, blood, wrinkled palms. Im as much a writer as I am the woman who dances on longboards. Im the books Ive written and Im my heritage of bad hombres. Native and alien. Nerd and rebel.

Human beings can maintain ambiguity over time, Rushkoff told me. They can hold onto contradiction. Machines cant do that. Machines resolve. Its this versus that. Whatever is uniquely human is in that in-between space they cant record.

The spark of human consciousness cant be uploaded in 0s and 1s. It can, however, be studied.

The Brain and Creativity Institute at USC is using brain scans and other tools to demonstrate that feelings sprout from the soil of our bodies and are central to consciousness.

Its really extraordinary that something that for so long was considered sort of peripheral to our lives feeling is in fact the very beginning, the foundation, the inaugural event of what becomes consciousness, said Antonio Damasio, an international leader in neuroscience who runs the institute with his wife, Hanna Damasio, an expert in brain imaging.

In his acclaimed book Descartes Error, he challenges French philosopher Ren Descartes famous saying, I think, therefore I am. Its more like I feel, therefore I am.

Our minds can conceptualize a self only because theyre receiving input from the rest of the body, through hormones, heartbeats, gurgling guts.

Thats why transhumanisms ideal of freeing the self from the body will never be achievable, and why longtermisms story of uploading future generations will remain just science fiction. Our minds are inseparable from the meat of us, with its unsolvable mysteries.

I sympathize with the desire to think otherwise. That siren song of immortality once lulled me into reckless risks, and I was lucky to survive. Now its spreading on a larger scale.

Mars and Metaverse are not the future. We must save the one planet that we have. Its the source of our miraculous bodies, which are far greater than any machine.

@jeanguerre

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Guerrero: I once fell for the fantasy of uploading ourselves. It's a dangerous myth - Los Angeles Times

GRAND RAPIDS, MI - Landmarks across Grand Rapids will be lighting up Thursday to help raise awareness for metastatic breast cancer (MBC) and the need to increase funding for research.

The fourth annual METAvivor Research and Supports global landmark campaign, #LightUpMBC, is again shining a light on this disease also known as Stage 4 or advanced breast cancer, in recognition of National Metastatic Breast Cancer Awareness Day on Thursday, Oct. 13. There is no cure for the disease.

Grand Rapids landmarks will join over 200 landmarks across the U.S., Canada and Ireland in lighting up with the metastatic breast cancer colors of teal, green and pink. McKay Tower, Blue Bridge, Amway Grand Plaza Hotel and the former UICA building in downtown Grand Rapids will proudly highlight the MBC colors.

Every year, more than 685,000 people worldwide die from metastatic breast cancer, according to a METAvivor news release. Metastatic cancer refers to when cancer cells move to other parts of the body and into normal tissue, according to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.

#LightUpMBC Michigan Ambassador Allison Bannister said she volunteered for METAvivor when she was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer in early 2019, just a few months before her 50th birthday.

I quickly became committed to working with organizations that raise funds directly toward programs and research to advance and improve treatment options for those with MBC, Bannister said.

While the color pink has primarily represented early-stage breast cancer awareness, pink alone does not resonate with the advanced-stage MBC community. Designed and trademarked by METAvivor, the tri-color ribbon of teal, green and pink symbolizes hope, immortality, healing and spirituality.

The big thing with October is that youre bombarded with all these pink campaigns, and a lot of it has to do with awareness and early detection, Bannister said. These things are important, absolutely, but we are at the point now where we need action, not awareness.

To highlight the importance of the diagnosis, Grand Rapids Mayor Rosalyn Bliss issued a proclamation making October 13 Metastatic Breast Cancer Awareness Day in perpetuity.

Its a big deal, Bannister said. Its not something that they do often. Her agreement to do it seems like a small thing, but it isnt when youre kind of in the shadows like we are. I think people just dont understand MBC, and this helps us be seen and recognized.

The mayors proclamation cites the organizations efforts saying, METAvior funds critical state IV metastatic breast cancer research, educates the public about metastatic breast cancer, and raises awareness of the significant lack of funding for state IV treatments.

A virtual Light Up MBC benefit will begin at 9 p.m. Thursday that will include MBC patient stories from illuminated landmarks around the country.

Katie Edick, who also has metastatic breast cancer and has fought alongside Bannister since the Light Up MBC campaign started in 2018, shares the same push for action.

I think another part of the Light Up campaign is to try and get allies, even people who may not have breast cancer but perhaps have been affected by it, said Edick, noting the importance highlighting how low funding for research for MBC to get more investment.

Thats why we have the colors of green, pink, and teal because were trying to show that its more than just pink because it has spread to other parts of the body. And so as a collective of women and men with metastatic breast cancer, were trying to raise our voices and kind of show people the research where the money needs to go. And one of the ways that its being done is through this Light Up for MBC campaign.

For more information about Thursdays event or to donate and view a list of participating landmarks, visit http://www.metavivor.org/LightUpMBC.

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Grand Rapids landmarks to light up Oct. 13 to raise awareness for metastatic breast cancer - MLive.com

Pickleball is one of those neo-sports that seems to have infected every sleepy suburban community all at once, spreading with its loud rhythmic thwacking sounds and tiny paddle wielders with unstoppable enthusiasm. Where did it come from? No one knows. It is the kudzu of casual sports. Its also the basis for the latest celebrity competition on CBS.

According to The Wrap, Stephen Colbert will host the special with Dierks Bentley, Will Ferrell, Emma Watson, Daniel Dae Kim, Max Greenfield, Luis Guzman, Sugar Ray Leonard, Tig Notaro and Kelly Rowland among those competing for pickleball immortality. Its for charity (Comic Relief), so its tough to rag too hard on it, but nonetheless its maybe a signal that weve reached the end, full stop, of culture itself.

If you love pickleball and you love celebrities and you love helping people, youre going to love watching these celebrities help people by playing pickleball, Colbert said in a statement.

It was previously thought that wed reached the end of culture with the immense popularity of Lip Sync Battle, but it turns out we had just a little bit more art to squeeze through the sieve to turn into content. Pickled will premiere November 17th on CBS and Paramount+, and Colbert will sing the National Anthem in a duet with Kenny Loggins. This event comes as news broke about Tom Brady buying a professional pickleball team, offering the rare phenomenon that makes you question whether youre too young or too old to understand it.

If theres a reason to be optimistic about any of this unrelenting Pickleball madness, its that Tom Brady has now jumped on the bandwagon, and we all know what he did to Bitcoin.

(via The Wrap)

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Make It Stop: Colbert Will Host Celebrity Pickleball Show - UPROXX

Interview with the Vampire - Jacob Anderon and Sam Reid

Interview with the Vampire is the new hit show from AMC which is setting all sorts of records on the network's streaming platform, AMC+. Adapted from the legendary work of author Anne Rice, the series is a departure from the Neil Jordan movie of the same name. Some, this author included, may even say that it is an improvement on the erstwhile adaptation because of its depth.

SK POP was part of a roundtable with Jacob Anderson of Game of Thrones fame, who plays Louis de Pointe du Lac in the series, and Australian actor Sam Reid, who portrays Lestat de Lioncourt. Fans can catch the critically-acclaimed show only on AMC and AMC+.

While the show may be rooted in fantasy, it also tackles more hard-hitting questions like whether immortality is a boon or a curse. The cast, intelligent and well-spoken, relayed their feelings about the series to this journalist, who almost felt like Daniel Molloy, sitting across from Louis de Pointe du Lac with a recording device.

As fond as the Interview with the Vampire cast is of the movie, they referred to the books instead for the 2022 adaptation. According to actor Sam Reid, Rolin Jones' adaptation is based on the books rather than the films:

Jacob Anderson echoed his co-star's words:

The Interview with the Vampire cast has certainly spent a long time pondering upon immortality since it is the central theme of the show. Anderson addressed the same as:

Sam Reid recognizes how integral immortality is to the plot of Interview with The Vampire. He elaborated upon the same as:

Adopting a more light-hearted tone, Interview with the Vampire star Reid also explained the curse of immortality - losing everyone you love over the course of many years.

Anderson also compared the struggle of the immortal Interview with the Vampire beings to the one that we as human beings go through everyday- the struggle to make it to the next day.

Captivating, funny, nostalgic, and thought-provoking, Interview with the Vampire is a show you can sink your fangs into if you want to satiate both your fantasy and philosophical cravings.

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Interview with the Vampire stars Jacob Anderson and Sam Reid on the "endurance and acceptance" of immortality (Exclusive) - Sportskeeda

Religious and spiritual cults work in mysterious ways. Most of these groups are either created in the service of another higher being (evidently other than God almighty) or achieve immortality (become God) through their rituals and sacrifices. In The Midnight Club, we are made privy to one such cult that operated from the basement of Brightcliffe Hospice. The Paragon cult was founded by Regina Ballard, and it used the symbol of an hourglass as their sigil. Ilonka had seen the hourglass multiple times, and she knew that it symbolized the collective consciousness of the members of the Paragon Cult. She had seen the symbol engraved on the trunks of the trees. She had seen it on the outer cover of Athenas diary, and after thinking about it for quite some time, she also realized that the same symbol was carved below the buttons of that creepy elevator too, which led them to the basement. The basement was probably the epicenter of all the evilness. Maybe it also served as a portal between the two worlds. Maybe the sigil of the Paragon cult, i.e., The Hourglass, was also symbolic of that intersection. Somewhere you feel that the cryptic symbolization of the Hourglass had a direct relation to the ghost of the old man and the old lady that Ilonka and Kevin saw quite frequently.

The two glass bulbs of the Hourglass probably symbolized the two different realms, i.e., the mortal realm in which we live and the realm of the dead. It was seen that one bulb of the Hourglass was painted black. The two bulbs (realms symbolically) converged at one particular point. Maybe that intersection point signified a sort of doorway through which evil spirits could enter the mortal realm. Maybe the Paragon cult used the symbol of the Hourglass as their sigil because they had realized that the intersection point lay in the basement of the Brightcliffe Hospice. Even Julia Jayne had realized that a mysterious power existed in the compounds of the hospice, and she was seen mentioning the same to Ilonka. She said that there were legends that the Brightcliffe woods had some sort of healing power. She says that often airplanes and other electronic devices used get glitches when passing through that area. She had started her company, Good Humor, in such close quarters because she wanted to harness that magical power.

The black and white bulbs of the Hourglass could also be said to represent a sort of duality. It represented the notions of good and bad, God and Devil, Dead and Undead, etc. This duality was also visible in almost all the stories that the residents told. Be it Anyas story, where she made a pact with the devil to create her clone, or Ilonkas story, where the character of Imani could see the future in the reflection in the pond, the duality that existed inside them was evidently visible. Even in Kevins story, we are made privy to a character named Dusty, who could see the dead people whom he had murdered. The stories were nothing but an extension of the fears, inhibitions, desires, vulnerabilities, and needs that existed inside the characters. It could be speculated that somewhere deep down, Ilonka and Kevin didnt negate the possibility that the undead could come to the mortal realm and have an impact on their lives. Maybe that is why Ilonka believed that the Paragon ritual would cure Anya.

It could be possible that the ghosts of the old man and the old lady were entering the real world through that doorway. But the question arises as to why they were only visible to Kevin and Ilonka. Why couldnt the others not see them? Well, it is possible that the ghost of the old man and the old woman (who probably were Stanley Oscar Freelan and Vera Freelan) wanted to find a vessel in the mortal realm. It could also be possible that both Kevin and Ilonka wanted to believe in the fact that there existed some powers that were beyond their understanding and were not too skeptical about it like the others. Maybe they subconsciously believed in the duality of life, as mentioned earlier. But nothing could be said for sure, as the first season of The Midnight Club refrains from clarifying our doubts.

The Hourglass could also be said to be a personification of time itself. The rituals in the cult were always aimed at defying death. It was aimed at reversing the course of nature. Obviously, it had some consequences, but the greed to stop the inevitable from happening was so great that it overpowered everything else. The Hourglass also signified the endless loop of life and death, among many other things. To make it the sigil of the cult clearly indicates that the cultists were aiming at attaining a kind of salvation, to end the cycle of life and death and lead an immortal life. It was imperative to turn the Hourglass in order to allow the sand to seep inside the other bulb. To reap the benefits of immortality, one needs to make a lot of sacrifices. Though the intersection point had been found in the basement and evidently had been opened too, one needed to constantly feed the dead to make the effects last for a longer period of time. Towards the end of The Midnight Club, we see that Julia Jayne wanted to conduct the ritual once again, maybe because the effects of the ritual she conducted in 1968 had dissipated over the period of time. But what if a cult member had found a way to make it last? What if a cult member knew that the Hourglass was merely a representation of the amount of time an evil spirit had before it had to replenish itself once again by feeding on a human soul (like a vampire drinking human blood to energize itself)? What if the grains of sand were like a stopwatch that informed the evil spirit about when to change the vessel it had occupied? What if there was somebody who was operating from the shadows and orchestrating this whole facade?

In the 5th episode of the Midnight Club, Natsuki says something while the group is celebrating the Death Day party with Amesh on the beach. She entertains the possibility (though just for fun at that time) that Dr. Georgina Stanton could be an evil spirit and was trading their souls to feed the dead? Natsuki also shares a native Japanese story titled Toshi no Taberu Hito, which could be translated as the Eater of Years. Natsukis mother used to tell a story about a spirit that used to eat the years of its victims and was generally found at a place where people were going to die. What if that was the sole motive of Dr. Stanton behind opening the Brightcliffe Hospice, where terminally ill patients came, and it was no less than a feast for an evil spirit that wanted to siphon the souls of the people or maybe use the physical body as a vessel? It could be possible that Dr. Stanton had realized that though she had opened the intersection point of the Hourglass and allowed the sand to seep inside, i.e., opened the doorway to another realm, she needed to constantly feed the dead, which in this case was the old man and the old woman.

It was often not known what happened to the bodies of the patients who didnt survive. Whenever somebody died, we always saw a man making the bed sheets and keeping the pillows in a very undiscerning manner. He had a very suspicious demeanor, and you only saw him whenever someone died. Maybe he was the personification of Charon (from Greek mythology), who carried the souls of the deceased. Though in this case, he might be working for the devil and not for the gods. Maybe he was responsible for taking the deceased bodies of terminally ill patients and leaving them in the basement for the dead to feed upon.

Another theory that could be formulated based on certain clues and hints is that Dr. Stanton was not feeding the dead, i.e., she herself was feeding on it as she was one of them. Maybe Vera Freelan had not died and was still present during the time when Regina Ballard started the cult. Maybe she had found a sustainable way to keep the dead satiated and reap the benefits of immortal life. We make this assumption because she had a framed picture of Stanley Oscar and Vera Freelan in her bedroom, and she had also framed the article from the Washington Journal that was published back in the year 1898 and covered the unveiling ceremony of the Freelan Mansion, which later came to be known as Brightcliffe Hospice.

The suspicion arises because it is not natural for somebody to have a picture of a couple in their bedroom if they are not in it, or if they do not share a close relationship with them. Also, Stanley Oscar and Vera Freelan were probably quite proud of their mansion, as the people back then considered it a marvel of architecture. Maybe Dr. Stanton was Vera Freelan in reality. The Freeland couple were quite proud of the fact that they had been able to create something so magnificent back in the day, and maybe thats why Dr. Stanton still had that newspaper clip displayed on one of the walls in her bedroom. According to different mythologies, the devil could always shapeshift and dwell inside different vessels. Maybe Dr. Stantons physical body was just being used as a vessel by Vera Freelan. Something about Dr. Stanton tells us that she was an old soul. The way she looked at things, it felt like there was something that she was hiding behind her scientific and logical sensibilities. It felt like she was bluffing everyone and using everybody for her own interests. Though nothing concrete was revealed in the first season of The Midnight Club, we might get a more plausible explanation pertaining to the identity of Dr. Stanton in Season 2.

See More: The Fictional Stories Of The Midnight Club Explained In-Depth

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What Was The Significance Of The Paragon "Hourglass" Symbol? Was Stanton Feeding The Dead Patients To The Ghosts? | DMT - DMT

For years, Ronnie Coleman stayed in the best shape known to humanity. He became the face of bodybuilding after Arnold Schwarzenegger, and rightly so. Moreover, he led the way for the most Mr. Olympia title wins with eight victories and completely dominated the bodybuilding circuit for several years. Hence, with those positives comes a whole list of negatives. One of them is the injuries he suffered.

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Undergoing many surgeries on his hip and spine, in 2016, Coleman had to carry out another surgery. With his fans concerned for his health, he gave them an inspiring message that still echoes through the ears of the bodybuilding fraternity. That comment single-handedly elevated his god-like status to immortality. Come what may, he wants to work out.

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For those unaware of his feats, he once squatted 800lbs and completely shook everyone with those double reps. But he needed surgeries after lifting a tremendous amount of weight. Before he went for surgery in 2016, though, he left an inspirational message.

It will be the same as always how you get inspiration from them to go on, get better and get back in the gym. Because I know this is going to go back, so fast. You know, one day I will be in surgery. The next day I will be recovering. And then the next day I will be in the gym, working out again,saidColeman.

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Im Hooked. Love His Story: Inspired by Ronnie Coleman, Game of Thrones FamedProfessional Strongman Spilled Beans About Competing in Bodybuilding EarlierThis Year

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Therefore, the level of commitment shown by him speaks volumes about his determination to work out. Coleman loved to work out, which is clear from his conversations. But the tremendous injuries he sustained are heartbreaking. In fact, he walks with his crutches now.

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Even though many bodybuilders worked out to win major championships, Colemans workouts were intense. Ultimately, it led to many injuries, and he had 13 surgeries on his spine. These surgeries compromised most of his mobility. He mentioned how he could not do the stretches he used to do. With various screws and nuts put in his disc, Coleman struggles.

All the hardware kind of interferes with the nerves. I used to be able to bend over and do all these crazy stretches. I cant do that no more,saidColeman.

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It is necessary to understand the level of pain he goes through even now. But whatever is said and done, Coleman will remain the greatest bodybuilder of all time. No one can come close to his dedication to the sport.

WATCH THIS STORY-Ronnie Coleman Delivered His Top 10 Lineups for Mr. Olympia 2022

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Next Day I Will Be in the Gym: Ronnie Coleman Shared an Optimistic Message With Concerned Fans Before Heading for His Seventh Surgery in 2016 -...

It might be hard to imagine that a phrase like soli Deo gloria could be misunderstood or misapplied. To God alone be the glory. What could be unclear or mistaken in those six simple words?

Fortunately, the main burden of the phrase is wonderfully and profoundly clear. Our generation (and, to be fair, every generation before us and after us) desperately needs to be confronted with such God-centered, God-entranced clarity. The clarion anthem of the Reformation has been the antidote to what ails sinners from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation. We fall short of the glory of God by preferring anything besides the glory of God above the glory of God. Thats what sin is.

We want the credit, the appreciation, the praise for any good weve done (and pity and understanding for whatever weve done wrong). We were made to make much of him, but we demand instead that he make much of us. That is, if we think much of God at all. John Piper has been waving the red flag for decades.

It is a cosmic outrage billions of times over that God is ignored, treated as negligible, questioned, criticized, treated as virtually nothing, and given less thought than the carpet in peoples houses. (I Am Who I Am)

Gods glory gets less attention than the fibers under our feet and we wonder why life feels so confusing and hard. Five hundred years ago, Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and other reformers recovered the priceless medicine: soli Deo gloria. Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory (Psalm 115:1).

The Reformers were living in a spiritual pandemic of compromise and confusion. As they walked through the darkness and corruption, they stumbled into the holy pharmacies of Scripture. And what did they find in those vials? They found, above all else, the glory of God. And that startling light became the North Star of all their resistance. They would not settle for any religion that robbed God of what was his and his alone.

Justification what makes us right before God had been distorted and vandalized in ways that uplifted our work, our self-determination, our glory. Gods justifying act was no longer found by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, but in significant measure, muddied by our efforts. And that emphasis on what we do in salvation siphoned off glory from the gospel. To us, O Lord, and to our name, be some of the glory.

The stubborn word of God would not surrender glory so easily, though. I am the Lord, the Reformers read; that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to carved idols (Isaiah 42:8). I, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins (Isaiah 43:25). Then four more times in just three short verses:

For my names sake I defer my anger;for the sake of my praise I restrain it for you,that I may not cut you off. . . .For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it,for how should my name be profaned?My glory I will not give to another. (Isaiah 48:911)

The only God who saves is a God rightly, beautifully jealous for glory. He plans and works all things, especially salvation, to the praise of his glory (Ephesians 1:6, 12, 14). Our only hope in life and death is that God will do whatever most reveals the worth and character and beauty of God. All our efforts to find glory beside him or apart from him only lead us further away from him and into sin. Any news that says otherwise, whether from a pope in Rome or an angel from heaven, is a curse, not a gospel.

How, then, might soli Deo gloria possibly go awry? If we wrongly assume that Gods ultimately receiving all the glory means his people receive none. No, if God alone is glorified in our salvation, Scripture promises, then we too are and will be glorified. Those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified (Romans 8:30). God himself glorifies someone other than God to the glory of God.

As the apostle Paul unfolds Gods plan in that greatest of all chapters, he says more: I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for . . . For what? For the appearing of Christ? For the renewed creation? No (not here anyway). The creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God (Romans 8:1819). The creation pants to see us what we will be. Why? Paul goes on, The creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God (Romans 8:21). When the creation sees us as we will be, it too will be set free.

For us to live in a paradise where fullness of joy lives where God himself lives we have to be something more than we are. Piper writes, You cant put the jet engine of a 747 in a tiny Smart Car. You cant fit the volcano of Gods joy in the teacup of my unglorified soul. You cant put all-glorious joy in inglorious people (Soli Deo Gloria). We will be made glorious enough to swim in the wells of the greatest happiness ever conceived. The oceans, mountains, and stars are lined up outside to get a glimpse of that transformation of our glory.

This thread in Scripture is as stubborn and stunning as the one beneath soli Deo gloria. We all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another (2 Corinthians 3:18). Even now, here on earth, were growing in degrees of glory. And then one day well close our eyes for the last time on earth, and the next time we open them, well barely recognize ourselves: Beloved, we are Gods children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is (1 John 3:2). When glory finally comes, it will not merely be a wonder to see, but a wonder to be.

What will happen when Christ returns? The dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality (1 Corinthians 15:5253). Or as he says a few verses earlier: What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power (1 Corinthians 15:4243). Were destined to live on a real earth like ours, with real bodies like ours, surrounded by blessings and experiences like ours, but without the weakness, mortality, and sin that plague all we know and enjoy now. That world will be like ours, but glorious. We will be ourselves, but glorious.

One of the most staggering and scandalous claims of Christianity is that God not only loves shameful, undeserving sinners, but shares his glory with them. He not only allows them to live in his presence, but he makes them like his Son.

In a man-centered age like ours, it seems right that the overwhelming focus of our theology be away from self and on God. Thirty years ago, John Piper lamented, I find the atmosphere of my own century far too dense with man and distant from the sovereignty of God (The Pleasures of God, 2). I assume the pounds per square inch are even higher today (and many more miles farther from heaven). Soli Deo gloria is a precious, God-breathed chorus for our self-sick generation. Were not in need of many articles exalting our glory.

We might need more than we have, though. Ironically, discovering all that we are and will be in Christ may be one key to escaping the cold cells of man-centeredness. Because anything glorious we discover about ourselves and we will be glorious is a mere reflection of him. We dont receive any glory that does not whisper his glory and therefore glorify him all the more. We are filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God (Philippians 1:911). If he makes us wise, he is always wiser. If he makes us strong, he is always stronger. If he makes us happy, he is always happier. As brilliant as the stars are each of them blazing fires so bright theyre seen across galaxies their Maker eclipses them all.

At our very, most glorious, nearly unimaginable best sinless, painless, fearless well always still be candles lit by a far greater light, the Glory of glories, God himself.

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You Will Be Breathtaking: Why God Clothes Us in Glory - Desiring God

What is the Bloodstone? Werewolf by Night, the new horror movie special based in the MCU directed by Michael Giacchino, brings in a whole new aesthetic and setting for the franchise. Borrowing from classic Universal monster movies, we follow a selection of hunters who wanted to be the next wielders off the mysterious Bloodstone, currently held by one Ulysses Bloodstone.

The Bloodstone patriarch is dying, and someone has to carry on his work. Could that be the namesake character, or perhaps estranged Elsa? Or Man-Thing? This object is highly coveted, and only the strongest and smartest will come away with the prize.

But what is the Bloodstone in the Marvel series special? Is it much different from the comics? Why does everyone want it so much? Theres a history to be uncovered, and thankfully the comics can give us the answers. This is no Infinity Stone, but it can still alter the paradigm of the universe, and we can tell you exactly how.

The Bloodstone is an ancient gem that landed on Earth thousands of years ago. It was created by the Exo-Mind, a race of beings that wanted to conquer the known universe. They needed to find a host, and were on that mission when they got into a scuffle with a human being.

That human was Ulysses Bloodstone, or him as a hunter during the Stone Age at least. He stumbled onto and fought the Exo-Mind for the bright red stone, and in the fight, therock exploded into several pieces. Much of Ulysses tribe were killed, but he was imbued with a fragment that gave him superhuman powers and immortality.

He spends the rest of his life simultaneously looking for revenge on the rest of the Exo-Mind, and finding others who have pieces of the Bloodstone to stop them using it for harm. This takes many thousands of years, and eventually hes succeeded by his daughter, Elsa Bloodstone.

In the comics, the Bloodstone makes you stronger, faster, gives you higher resistance to the elements, special cognitive abilities like ESP, and an immortality. Werewolf by Night on Disney Plus only really goes into the immortality part, as Ulysses, whose body has started to decay because hes so old, decides to have a group of hunters compete to be his successor.

Later in the special, the Bloodstone is seen as having the power to disrupt other monsters. You can use it to force a transformation, or subdue and control a beast if needed. The limitations of the object are ill-defined thus far, though it seems to broadly have the same origin.

Elsa Bloodstone is the one who ends up holding it. Shes not a fan of her dad, so well have to wait and see what she gets up to with all that power. You can check out our list of the best fantasy series for some ideas.

Read the rest here:

Werewolf by Night: what is the Bloodstone? - The Digital Fix

The chilling details of the Kerala case have shocked the nation. (Illustration: Vani Gupta/ IndiaToday)

By Pallavi: Scene 1: A couple, sitting in their tiny house, call the healer. He had promised they would be rich by following some simple steps. They did everything they were told to do. They found a woman, brought her home and took her life to please God. The walls and floor of the house were purified by her blood. Her body was chopped into pieces and consumed in order to change destiny. But this was months ago. There was still no improvement in finances.

You must repeat the procedure one more time, sacrifice some more, the healer said. And so, the husband and the wife, went on to find another soul.

Scene 2: Lajja Shankar is emphatically chanting mantras, beating a drum in rhythm, and looking at the sky just as an eclipse is about to begin. It is the last step, the last sacrifice to please God. Lajja, immersed in his own consciousness and reality, is just moments away from what he always wanted. No, it is not about money or fame. He only wants one thing -- immortality. He's taking all the risk for only one power. He just wants to live forever.

Cut to this screen.

One of the scenes mentioned above is from a movie, complete fiction. But the other is something that has happened in the real world. Can you figure out which one is reality?

If you have been following the headlines, a case of human sacrifice has caught the interest of the country. In Kerala, two women have been murdered. Their bodies were chopped into pieces, breasts set aside for 'safety', and knife inserted in their private parts. The two women died in this manner in a village because a couple was told this would make them rich.

And yes, scene 1 is from real life. The scene 2 is from Akshay Kumar's movie Sangharsh in which Ashutosh Rana played Lajja Shankar, a maniac who kidnaps and kills children to attain 'immortality'.

According to National Crime Records Bureau, there were 68 murders in India in the year 2021 related to witchcraft and six recorded cases of child/human sacrifice.

If you check local newspapers, you will likely see a story of human sacrifice every other day. But the chilling details of the Kerala case have shocked the nation.

As unsettling details of the case unravel, here are a few such cases from the past that make us question if we are actually living in the 21st century.

In July 1985, a case of human sacrifice and triple murder in Odisha sent shockwaves across the nation. Three teenage boys were lured to a shrine atop a steep hill near Ranpur, 75 kms west of Bhubaneswar, where they were brutally killed and their blood offered in a misguided attempt to propitiate the goddess. India Today had reported that then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi sought a report on the inhuman act.

From the beginning, it was clear that it was a case of human sacrifice in its crudest form -- the children had their heads crushed with sharp rocks at the foot of the idol.

The three lives were taken against the backdrop of villagers of Ranpur gathered on the lawns of the Maninag temple to watch a jatra, a suspense-packed drama about a king and his queen being mesmerised by a tantrik. The villagers held their breath as the tantrik prepared to sacrifice the couple in order to gain glory for himself. But this story of sacrifice had a happy ending - the king's soldiers turned up and slew the wicked tantrik.

Meanwhile, the true horror was taking place at a distance with the three boys.

In 2004, a truck driver working for a big granite exporter claimed he had witnessed human sacrifice by the operators. Blaming the lorry operator, he told the local police station that in the year 1999, he was asked to pick up mentally unstable people. He brought a dozen of mentally challenged people and claimed that two of them were killed, throats slit, and buried at a quarry.

In September 2015, IAS officer U Sagayam, who was appointed as the legal commissioner by Madras High Court to probe into a Rs 16,000 crore granite scam decided to investigate these allegations. The photo of this officer sleeping at the burial site to protect the evidence became viral. In the morning they exhumed 4 skeletons. Days later, two more were found. The company, however, denied the allegations.

In May 2020, as the world tried to fight with coronavirus pandemic, a priest in Odisha got a call from God. As the world suffered from Covid-19 and loss of lives, the 72-year-old priest received an 'order from God'. He killed a 52-year-old man with a sharp weapon to please God and end the pandemic.

The incident took place at a temple near Cuttack district. The accused, however, surrendered before the police soon after committing the crime.

During interrogation, the priest said he committed the murder after receiving orders from god in his dream in which he saw that human sacrifice will dispel the coronavirus.

Read more:

Kerala human sacrifice and the horror of killing in God's name - India Today

In the winter of 1861, the second editor in chief of The Atlantic, James T. Fields, received a letter from Julia Ward Howe, the abolitionist and suffragist. Attached to her letter was a poem she hoped to see published in this magazine. The letter is worth reading in full:

Fields!

Do you want this, and do you like it, and have you any room for it in January number? I recd. your invitation to meet the Trollopes just five minutes before my departure for Washington, so could only leave a verbal answer, hope you got it.

I am sad and spleeny, and begin to have fears that I may not be, after all, the greatest woman alive. Isnt this a melancholy view of things? but it is a vale, you know. When will the world come to end?

In hastesincerely yoursJ.W.H.

Sad and spleeny! We should all be so afflicted by Howes melancholy-inducing imperfections. Howe had just written her poem in a fever burst at the Willard Hotel. I awoke in the gray of the morning twilight, she later said, and as I lay waiting for the dawn, the long lines of the desired poem began to twine themselves in my mind. Fields, in possession of that most crucial editing skillknowing when to leave copy alonegave it a title and published Battle Hymn of the Republic on the first page of the February 1862 edition. (Howe received, in return, a $5 freelance fee and immortality.)

Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read.

One challenging aspect of employment here at The Atlanticwhich enters its 166th year of continuous publication with this issueis that we have published not only Battle Hymn of the Republic but also Longfellows Paul Reveres Ride, and the first chapters of W. E. B. Du Boiss The Souls of Black Folk, and Robert Frosts The Road Not Taken, and Rachel Carsons meditations on the oceans, and Einsteins denunciation of atomic weapons, and so on, ad infinitum. I sometimes ask my colleagues to look to Edward Weeks, the ninth editor of The Atlantic, as a model; in 1927, while still a junior editor, he brought in Ernest Hemingway. This, I tell my colleagues, should be the ambition of every editor at The Atlantic: to discover the next world-changing writer. We owe this to our readers, and we owe this to our predecessors, who tried very hard to make The Atlantic the great American magazine.

The high bar set by past editors is lowered just a bit in our minds by knowledge that not every article, short story, and poem published since 1857 has been imperishably wise. We have just recently posted our full archive online, and easy perusal has brought us to a number of unfortunate if unsurprising discoveriesfor instance, far too much enthusiasm, at certain moments, for eugenical sterilization; an article from 1934 titled My Friend the Jew, which is roughly what you would expect; and a poem by Thomas Bailey Aldrich, the magazines fourth editor, titled Unguarded Gates, written in response to Emma Lazaruss The New Colossus, which to our chagrin was not first published in The Atlantic but is cast in bronze at the foot of the Statue of Liberty. Aldrichs poem, published in 1892, refers to liberty as a white goddess and warns of accents of menace alien to our air. A predisposition against censorship keeps us from hiding the poet laureate of family separation in some dusty digital subbasement. The history of a great magazine, after all, is as messy as the history of a great nation.

On balance, I should say, the historical record is exemplary. I believe this has to do mainly with the preposterously talented journalists who have been drawn here over the centuries, but The Atlantics excellent record of aesthetic and moral success is due as well to a founding mission statement, crystalline in clarity, that guides us to this day. The authorship of this manifesto, which was published in the first issue, is unclear, though it was most likely drafted by Francis Underwood, the largely unheralded deputy editor who dreamed up the idea for this magazine, and James Russell Lowell, who was placed in charge by the owners at The Atlantics birth. The manifesto has as signatories many, if not most, of the literary worthies of the day: Ralph Waldo Emerson, who appeared in the first issue; Oliver Wendell Holmes, who came up with The Atlantics name; Nathaniel Hawthorne, who would become the magazines Civil War correspondent; and Harriet Beecher Stowe, Americas most popular author, and The Atlantics, too, until she launched an intemperate attack on Lord Byron and cost the magazine thousands of subscribers. (We have since recovered, as has Lord Byron.) To my sadness, Moby-Dick being my favorite American novel, Herman Melville never found a way to contribute, though I like to imagine that both Lowell and Fields tried hard to induce him. I can hear their plea: Anything more on whales would be fine, Herman, really. Try again with the whales.

The Atlantic was founded as an abolitionist magazine, and as a conveyor of the American idea, to quote the founders in their manifesto, although, you will notice upon careful reading, they did not actually define this idea. The manifesto makes very clear that only by concentrating intently on literature, the arts, and politics in equal measure would the editors fulfill the founders mandate to make this a truly American magazine: The healthy appetite of the mind for entertainment in its various forms of Narrative, Wit, and Humor, will not go uncared for.

On culture, The Atlantics founders set out to include the whole domain of aesthetics, and hope gradually to make this critical department a true and fearless representative of Art, in all its various branches.

On politics, their declaration of purpose stated that The Atlantic

will be the organ of no party or clique, but will honestly endeavor to be the exponent of what its conductors believe to be the American idea. It will deal frankly with persons and with parties, endeavoring always to keep in view that moral element which transcends all persons and parties, and which alone makes the basis of a true and lasting prosperity. It will not rank itself with any sect of anties, but with that body of men which is in favor of Freedom, National Progress, and Honor, whether public or private.

The challenges of making this magazine have been, and continue to be, many. In the late 19th century, it was the introduction of photography and graphics into lushly funded New York magazines that threatened The Atlantic. In this century, it was the rise of the internet, and of a battalion of frenetic, clickbaity, hot-take websites, that caused some to believe that magazines like The Atlantic were the albatross of media. (Many of these illustrated weeklies and online ventures have long since proved to be ephemeral.)

But the hardest challenge, especially in a period of national fracturing, cynicism, and populism, is to keep our promise to be above party or clique. You will forgive us if we sometimes fail; the Republican Party of the moment is more or less authoritarian and therefore unconservative in approach, and it is difficult for us to treat Trumpism as a legitimate ideology. Conservatism as traditionally understood is worthy of deep discussion and exploration, and its proponents find a hospitable home for their writing here. We could not be The Atlantic without these writers and thinkers. Our mission is to be big, not small; independent, not partisan; and, above all, rigorous.

We also try very hard to be interesting. This is a prerequisite. If we cant entice you to read our articles, theres no point in publishing our collective findings about America and the world. I believe our team is doing an excellent job of being interesting, and I hope youll agree. Im very glad that you, our readers, are on this ride with us. The Atlantic has been arguing the cause of Freedom, National Progress, and Honor for 165 years now, and, thanks to you, well be doing this for a long time to come.

This editors note appears in the November 2022 print edition with the headline The American Idea.

Read more here:

The American Idea - The Atlantic