AKMA — modulating to bluer skies

@FredFredSanders Have people not read letters from, say, the mid-19thC? Honestly, the contemporary bankruptcy of rhetorical consciousness makes me deeply sad.

@AKMA Imagine Paul writing some of the most beautiful theological prose in the NT at Philippians 2, only for generations to arise later who collude to refer to it every dang time as a found hymn that he copy-pasted w/tweaks.

Earliest Easter hymn? Probably not, but Markus Barth hypothesized that Eph 1:20ff was a ready-made hymn that the Ephesians already knew and that Paul was quoting. Here's his reconstruction of the postulated hymn:

@librarythingtim Sorta biases the comparison by stipulating that the language of the gospels is not just ‘Greek’, but ‘*Koine* Greek’, as if that were a different language from Classical Greek(s) and modern Demotic. And as you say, what about different locations and periods of Aramaic?

Awkward question for my language friends: While Aramaic remains the *NAME* of the language, how much has Aramaic changed since antiquity—since Achaemenid Aramaic, Jesus' Aramaic or classical Syriac? Can a modern speaker read ancient texts, or is it more like how we could CALL Italian "Latin" but it wouldn't make it the same language?

@ebenezer1954 @Autistic_Lauren Apprehensive but resigned. Eager to get back home (though once I get there, I have a blast).

@Autistic_Lauren Apprehensive but excited

Asking autistics, how do you feel about traveling to unfamiliar destinations?

@HeerJeet …Our love is like Jesus, but worse. Though you seal the cave up where you've lain its body, It rises. It rises.

Well, everything dies, baby, that's a fact But maybe everything that dies someday comes back

@Praxeas I mean, he's just repeating what he remembers Curtis LeMay saying, isn't he?

Hegseth’s “Stone Age” quip might seem oddly apt - not in the way he thinks - but we might be doing the Neolithic a disservice to associate him with it.

@FredFredSanders Especially (b). ‘Finished’ is an entirely justifiable translation.

I like & agree w/this article but (a) you can't root out that translation from its history in English hymnody & poetry, nor should you try (sang it just last night), and (b) Peplērōtai was at hand as a clearer way to evoke fullness; telos ought to signal finality or perfection.

Marco Rubio: “Just because you’re born on U.S. soil doesn’t make you a citizen. Your parents must be U.S. citizens.” Grok: “Marco Rubio was born in Miami in 1971. His parents became citizens in 1975. Rubio is a beneficiary of birthright citizenship.”

March listening according to @lastfm: 1 Thelonious Monk 17 2 The Beatles 12 3 Belle and Sebastian 10 4 They Might Be Giants 9 5 Van Morrison 9 6 Talking Heads 8 7 The Who 8 8 Aretha Franklin 7 9 Neko Case 7 10 The Clash 7 (the Mountain Goats Exclusion Principle applies)

The government is reportedly considering triggering the break clause in Palantir’s NHS data contract. It's a no-brainer - this break clause is an exit ramp and the government should take it.

The Government is considering scrapping the NHS-Palantir deal. Do you want Palantir out of the NHS? RT if you do. #PalantirOUT

🚨BREAKING: GOP Sen. Lankford just said that the Democrats' demands in the Senate were "absolutely absurd; they asked for things, for instance, like ICE could not be at polling places." The cat is out of the bag; ICE is coming to the polling locations in Nov. This is alarming.

Bank of America just agreed to pay $72.5 million for helping Jeffrey Epstein traffic underage girls. The settlement dropped late Friday night. Buried under war headlines and protest coverage. Almost like they planned it that way. And this is literally the FOURTH major bank settlement tied to Epstein's sex trafficking operation. JPMorgan paid $290 million to victims. Then another $75 million to the US Virgin Islands. Deutsche Bank paid $75 million to victims and got hit with a $150 million regulatory fine on top of that. Now Bank of America adds $72.5 million. Total exposed so far: Over $660 million. Number of bankers criminally charged: ZERO. Number of bankers who went to prison: ZERO. Every single settlement came with "no admission of wrongdoing." Every bank said some version of "we regret the association" and moved on. But the court filings tell a very different story: JPMorgan filed suspicious activity reports on Epstein's accounts as early as 2002. Their own compliance team flagged him. They KNEW something was wrong but they kept banking him for 11 more years anyway. When Epstein was alive and actively trafficking girls, JPMorgan flagged $4.3 million in suspicious transactions. After he died in his cell? They retroactively reported $1.3 BILLION in suspicious activity going back to 2003. That's 300 times more than what they reported while he was alive. A Senate investigation found that JPMorgan executives overruled their own compliance officers to keep Epstein as a client. Internal emails show top executives approved continued business with Epstein even AFTER his 2008 conviction because he was bringing in ultra-wealthy referrals. Deutsche Bank picked Epstein up as a client in 2013, the same year JPMorgan finally dropped him. Their own CEO later admitted onboarding him was "a critical mistake that should never have happened." They literally kept him for five more years. Bank of America allegedly didn't file suspicious activity reports on Epstein-linked accounts until AFTER he was dead. The pattern is identical every time: See the red flags. Ignore them. Profit from the relationship. Wait until the client dies or gets arrested. Then file a report. Then write a settlement check. Then say you did nothing wrong. Now think about this... These are the same banks that freeze your business account over a $5,000 wire transfer. The same compliance departments that require endless forms of ID to open a checking account. The same institutions that flag small business owners for "suspicious activity" if they deposit cash from their own customers two weeks in a row. But a convicted sex offender runs hundreds of millions through their systems for DECADES and nobody notices. Nobody reports it. Nobody escalates it. Nobody calls law enforcement. Until he's dead. Then suddenly everyone remembers everything. Senator Wyden called for a criminal investigation. The Treasury Department has thousands of pages of Epstein bank records they still won't release. Congressional investigators say the full picture of what these banks knew hasn't come close to being revealed. $660 million in settlements and fines. But not a single criminal charge against any banker at any institution. That's the system working exactly as designed. I wonder why no one's talking about the files anymore?

Hillary Clinton's private email server was front page news for weeks. Meanwhile FBI Director Kash Patel's private emails are hacked - and shared publicly - by Iran and it barely makes headlines for a day.

"Trump, the Mar-a-Lago golfer, is the only bull in the world who walks around with his own china shop. When a clown takes over the Palace, he doesn't become King. It's the Palace that becomes a circus" French senator Claude Malhuret once again nails it. You won't hear a better indictment of Trump and his Gulf war than this. Well worth 5 minutes of your time My English s/t 👇

@sccarlson @chrisryankugler I'll admit, I’m still interested. But then, I’m especially interested in problems for which I don't see any ground for a *compelling* demonstration or refutation.

@chrisryankugler Send me a copy!

Absolutely No One: How bout another pistis Christou article? Me: "A Response to Kevin Grasso: The Possessive/Characterizing Genitive Reading and The Covenantal Context of πιστις Χριστου in Paul" BBR 35.4 (forthcoming).

I noticed that.

The BBC is ignoring the biggest march against the far right in history. Can we keep sharing to get it trending?

And just like that, it’s completely VANISHED from the media. A sitting congressman, Ted Lieu, said on the record the Epstein files are being blocked because they show Trump raped and threatened to kill children. Let’s keep this in the spotlight every day.

@colinmccredie 'All that politeness!' I hear you, Mr Rickman.

I once auditioned for a play Alan Rickman was directing. He was absolutely charming and a thrill to read some scenes with him. Weird to see it made his Diaries!