One of the MOST Fair and Diverse Places in the World

 From Tierney's Real News:

Below are pictures from Communist China, Japan, South Korea, India, the Middle East, the Caribbean, Latin America, Africa & South America. There is NO diversity virtually anywhere in the world except in America, Europe & Australia. STOP BUYING THE CON. STOP LETTING TEACHERS OR PUNDITS SCHOOL YOUR CHILDREN IN A LIE.

Ask yourself why it's OK for EVERY OTHER COUNTRY in the world to NOT be diverse? The real reason is that these countries want America to exterminate all white people, Christians & Jews and send our money to them so they can continue to segregate themselves!

This is the leadership of Communist China. Do you see any diversity here? NONE. Where are the women? Where are the white people? Where are the people of color? JOKE. (Read more.)

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Different Doesn’t Mean Better (or Worse)

From Mater et Magistra:

It’s a funny thing to watch your child grow up in ways that feel foreign to you. I am not an engineer. I don’t wake up early to check on livestock. I’ve never, not once, thought about how to build a treehouse without YouTube.

But he does. Naturally. Fearlessly.

And I find myself both in awe, and in fear, of what’s coming.

The awe is easy to explain. He’s wonderful. He surprises me daily with what he can do, how he sees the world, what he remembers, what he builds, and how deeply he cares (in his quiet, sneaky way).

The fear is harder. It’s not fear of him misbehaving…he’s generally thoughtful and kind. It’s more the fear of not knowing how to parent him. To guide this kind of child, one I didn’t grow up beside.

Because his boyhood doesn’t fit into the neat lines of the childhood I knew.

And that’s not bad.
It’s just a thing. (Read more.)

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A Romantic Wiltshire Farmhouse

  

 

From House and Garden:

Thirty years on and both house and garden have matured beautifully. The roses the couple planted clamber in pretty profusion up the front of the house and over the summerhouse, the reclaimed panelling in the library looks as though it has been there forever and one of their children’s bedrooms has become an attic den for a visiting grandchild.

Though the renovation of the house was tough going, the original layout of the 17th-century farmhouse, with its overlaid Georgian façade of honey-coloured Bath stone, remains undisturbed. Two rooms on either side of a central hall and the same above, topped by smaller attic bedrooms – along with extensions at the back and to one side, dating respectively from the 1950s and the 1980s – had already swelled the building from one room to two rooms deep, allowing for another couple of first-floor bedrooms and three bathrooms. Kevin and Susie’s only structural alteration was to knock three rooms into one to create a kitchen stretching along the rear with a dining room at one end, connected by double doors to the sitting room. (Read more.)

 

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Farmland Seized, Families Betrayed

 From The Vigilant Fox:

40 acres of Missouri farmland are being seized for a secretive data center—and furious residents say the deal was deliberately hidden from them.

In St. Charles, families only learned of the project weeks ago after non-disclosure agreements buried the details. Now they fear soaring bills, vanishing water, and the collapse of their community—all forced through without their consent.

At a chaotic town hall, neighbors said they only discovered the plan when a memo landed on their porch. Instead of answers, they were handed a staged spectacle—officials dodging questions, deflecting blame, and shuffling residents from booth to booth.

And Missouri isn’t alone. In Texas, another giant data hub is being pushed into a drought-stricken county. Critics warn billionaires are carving up towns to expand a surveillance state while silencing the very people who live there.

Is Missouri the first domino in a nationwide takeover? Watch Maria Zeee’s report now—before this agenda steamrolls America. The truth goes even deeper than you think. (Read more.)

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The Mysorean Ruler Who Battled Britain

 From New Straits Times:

CELEBRITY status doesn't usually last long for world leaders. As long ago as the eighteenth18th century, those few names that were known across the planet endured a little longer. Haider Ali and Tipu Sultan have sunk into obscurity, as has their kingdom.

Mysore only exists as a part of southern-Indian history these days. Karnataka is the modern incarnation and this includes locations which have become more celebrated in recent years for reasons that might have pleased Tipu Sultan.

Everyone in Malaysia with an interest in tech will be familiar with Bangalore (or Bengaluru as it is known in India). This is Asia's Silicon Valley and is apparently growing faster than the sluggish old mothership in California.

Malaysia's connections with southern India have been strong for more than 2,000 years. Now they are even stronger, thanks to the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia's (IAMM) latest exhibition. More than a Day as a Tiger: Haider Ali and Tipu Sultan of Mysore (1761-99) opened recently and should spark some interest in a kingdom that didn't last long, but almost beat the British as they advanced unstoppably across India 250 years ago. (Read more.)

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Visual Odes to Joy

 

 From The Way of Beauty:

From around the 4th century AD, when public Christian sacred art became possible in the Roman Empire, the image of Christ as a bearded man emerged as the dominant prototype (along with the first distinctive Christian style of art, the iconographic tradition). This was not an arbitrary choice but a deliberate one, rooted in the need to portray Christ’s humanity in a way that the faithful could recognise. (It is interesting that this has remained the dominant prototype to this day and also corresponds to images coming from other sources, such as the Shroud of Turin.) A painting of Christ must reflect what we know of Him as a man, including his physical attributes. Yet, this portrayal ought never be merely naturalistic. The artist’s task is to transcend the material, to suggest the spiritual soul that animates the human person.

As described above, there is a focus on conveying the inner life through facial expressions and gestures. The eyes, often referred to as the “windows of the soul,” are frequently depicted with meticulous care, conveying thought, feeling, and presence. A subtle gesture, a carefully rendered expression—these draw us into the mystery of the person. Even in the restrained iconographic style, where emotional extravagance is avoided, the viewer senses a living, breathing soul behind the image.

Aside from the expression and gesture, this is also achieved through what I call ‘partial abstraction’—a deliberate departure from strict realism to evoke the inner life of the subject. Whether in the serene stillness of an icon, the emotive intensity of a gothic crucifix, or the dramatic naturalism of a baroque painting, artists employ conventions of partial abstraction - some obvious and some far more subtly applied - that characterise their tradition and lend to it a symbolic, otherworldly quality.

For those who wish to explore this further, my book *The Way of Beauty* delves into how these artistic conventions developed to communicate spiritual truths through visual form. (Read more.)

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SHOWDOWN: Karoline Leavitt SHATTERS the Media’s Lies

 From Overton News:

Next up was Shawn McCreesh from The New York Times.

McCreesh, who writes ENDLESS hit pieces attacking the president for every move he makes, tried to stir up more doubt…but this time, Leavitt didn’t let it slide.

He questioned Trump’s strategy for brokering peace...because journalists are much better at diplomacy than the president of the United States.

McCreesh:

“If the point is to get anybody on the same page, why wouldn’t Trump just take the call from Putin while the other leaders were in the room? He said it would be ‘disrespectful’ to that, but why is that disrespectful?”

Leavitt had him pegged from the moment he opened his mouth.

“With all due respect, only a reporter from ‘The New York Times’ would ask a question like that, Shaun.”

It was a haymaker…and he knew it.

But Leavitt continued by giving McCreesh a quick lesson in how diplomacy actually works:

“The president met with all these European leaders at the White House 48 hours after sitting down with President Putin on American soil.”

“In fact, there was so much progress in the readout given to these European leaders immediately following his meeting with President Putin that every single one of them got on a plane 48 hours later and flew to the United States of America.”

“These leaders, who this war is in the backyard, are very grateful that the president took that call, and that he was there to provide them with a readout of Russia’s thinking on this.”

“Something that was not done by the previous administration at all.”

Masterclass. (Read more.)

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Athena Parthenos

 From The Collector:

The statue of Athena Parthenos was a large-scale ivory and gold statue created in the 5th century BCE and dedicated to the goddess in the Parthenon on the Athenian Acropolis. The larger-than-life devotional image of one of ancient Greece’s most important goddesses was considered a wonder in ancient times. What do we know about the statue, when it was built, what it looked like, and what happened to it?

 Athena was the Greek goddess of wisdom, war, and handicrafts, and one of the most popular deities worshipped in ancient Greece. She was considered the patron goddess of numerous Greek cities, including Athens. Zeus impregnated Metis, the goddess of wisdom, but due to a prophecy, became concerned that a son born from Metis would be more powerful than he. Therefore, he tricked the pregnant Metis into transforming into a fly and swallowed her. But Athena continued to grow inside of Zeus, eventually giving him such a terrible headache that he had to ask Hephaestus to break his head open. Athena emerged fully grown and fully dressed in spectacular armor made for her by Metis. She became one of the Olympian gods.

Athena was a complex goddess with many aspects, recognized by various epithets. Athena Parthenos was Athena the Virgin, recognizing that Athena was one of the female Greek gods, alongside Artemis and Hestia, who chose to remain a virgin rather than submit to a man. The title also recognized her role as an enforcer of sexual modesty and other social norms that governed society. (Read more.)

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The Stuart Joint Monarchs in Art

Mary Stuart, daughter of Charles I, the Princess Royal

 From Andrea Zuvich at ArtUK:

When King Charles II – the 'Merry Monarch' – died in 1685, he left behind not only his grieving widow, Catherine of Braganza, but also many children. None of these, however, were legitimate, all having been born to other women. Therefore none of them could become his heir.

As a result of this situation, Charles's younger brother, James, Duke of York, inherited the throne by default. At this point, James had two legitimate daughters from his first marriage to Anne Hyde: Mary (born 1662) and Anne (born 1665). As Duchess of York, Anne Hyde commissioned popular artist Peter Lely to create a series of portraits of the most beautiful women at court, which came to be known as the 'Windsor Beauties'.

In this portrait, we see James and Anne together (a later version, now in the Royal Collection, features their daughters, Mary and Anne). Anne, Duchess of York, died from breast cancer in 1671, aged only 34. Two years later, James married Mary of Modena, a much younger Roman Catholic, Italian princess. For some years, the couple suffered the tragic losses of their children. As a result, Mary of York, the eldest surviving child from his first marriage, was the presumed heiress, and here she is around age 12. The Anglo-Dutch Wars began in the 1650s, so Stuart Britain was often at odds with the Dutch Republic, despite a marital alliance between Mary, Princess Royal, the daughter of Charles I and Henrietta Maria, and Willem II of Orange. This union was unhappy and marred further by Willem's death from smallpox a little over a week before their only child, William, was born in 1650. The boy grew up to have health challenges of his own, including asthma. He was widely considered unattractive both in his physical form and with regard to his personality (he came across as cold and irritable).(Read more.)

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