SecondJon @SecondJon@qoto.org

@Effortless@noagendasocial.com uh oh.

Thinking about the shepherds tonight...

Fear Not, said the angels to the shepherds, the rough and tough cowboys of their day.

When an angel appears to give a message in scripture, the recipient falls over in fear. A lot. They seem to always have to start with Fear Not.

How many of us have an understanding of The Story of the Biblical Narrative where this fits in? Where the weight of reality when revealed, even a little, strikes fear into the strongest and boldest?

@ReadyKilowatt. Delayed because of Nan?

@Big_Diggity how about... We decide how much the store tips us for being the cashier?

With record high increases to the cost of living already before inflation, the government pushes it higher still.

In January, #Denver will start charging FEES for trash pickup in addition to the taxes that have always paid for it. The price of eggs just more than doubled due to new #Colorado regulations. Denver and other localities charge government fees for shipping bags to shop at brick and mortar stores, and the state charges fees to the citizen for every delivery from Amazon or anywhere else. Some homes that burnt down last year north of Denver can't be rebuilt due to regulations that make houses cost way more to rebuild because of regulatory requirements, more than insurance policies cover.

I wonder how much of the cost of living increase that has made Colorado unaffordable for the next generation is directly relatable to these Nickle and Diming policies that continue to take more and more of the people's earnings to disappear into the budget.

Some cost of living is certainly because we have amazing geography and limited space. But when it feels like a new policy to take money from my family is implemented every day, it makes me wonder if most of this cost is unnecessary and the financial strain is directly tied back to politicians messing up our state rather than our state drawing a crowd for being awesome.

(For those outside of Colorado, these are all "fees" because if they call them a tax they have to be voter approved. When they want more of our money and they know the citizens don't want it, they can just call it a fee and no consent is necessary.)

I'm not really keeping up on the Media's framing of this, but here's what I gather from toots I'm seeing about Musk and Twitter:

Musk is bad for unbanning people who were banned for political opinions and jokes. Because speech is violence, it's a safety issue.

Musk is bad for banning people live doxing the location of his children leading to people... Tracking down and stalking and confronting them. Not a safety issue like a satirical blog post with opinions that disagreed with The Party.

Musk can do no right.

Think of all the actually real life impact its had that the Babylon Bee can tweet jokes again, and that corporate spokespeople can't use the guys' own platform to endanger his kids!

It's chilling. And more newsworthy than the information coming out about how Twitter has been run until now. That whole category is information we shall call.... Bruno.

80 games down. This one was tough. I like the game, but sometimes it's several times throughout the day staring at the puzzle to see the words.

➡️➡️➡️➡️➡️➡️➡️➡️➡️➡️➡️➡️➡️➡️

https://www.andrewt.net/puzzles/cell-tower/?p=80

@johnclint I have more questions than answers.

I have theories but I know they may be nothing more than confirmation bias. My sample size of two congregations is too small to be statistically relevant I suppose.

One question is...what led to the drop in membership in the first place?

The answer to the problem, according to the NPR article, is to become less churchy. But... That's not a new idea. Becoming more "culturally relevant" and more "seeker friendly". These trends have been around since... The peak attendance years? Is that when those ideas hit it big time? Is it possible that churches are doubling down in the same strategies that contributed to the drop in attendance in the first place?

I don't know.

The Roman Catholic attendance seems to have stabilized. Maybe there's more data available there.

I am not convinced that doing the right thing is always popular. Attendance counts for some things, but a shrinking church could be a better church than a growing church.

@johnclint really interesting as I read into some of the source material and also compare to my personal experience.

It felt awkward walking around the neighborhood for Halloween this year with another neighborhood dad, who is pastor of a church...

He has seen church attendance never bounced back after covid.

Our church has grown over the last few years, we recently had to move to multiple services because we couldn't fit everyone in with just one.

A Roman Catholic friend bemoans not finding any church with young families like his.

Our church is 40% kids and youth, with more young families joining regularly.

We meet on Sunday mornings. In a church building. We have liturgy, though most didn't grow up with it. The Bible is taught. We have communion. All the stuff the npr article says is pushing people away...but our church keeps growing, as does the church we grew out of as a church plant less than a decade ago. Since then we've tripled in size, despite covid.

I'm not a scholar in this area, I just find it really interesting to see the difference.

@johnquiggin @scrumble_eggs @mpjgregoire@mamot.fr I'm sorry I don't understand your post. Does it relate to the post to which you're replying?

Living grandchildren should count for more than the dead in what regard?

@realcaseyrollins I guess it depends where you look. I searched the story to see the miracle of positive comments and didn't see it. But glad you got a glimpse.

The comments sections seem to bring out the worst in us.