The tennis star is gearing up for the US Open on Aug. 30.

The police have confirmed that yet another firearm incident took place, this time in the Ord Road area, and said that “so far, there are no reported injuries.” A police spokesperson said, “As a result of information received Friday afternoon, 3rd May 2024, police officers were dispatched to a report of gunshots in the Ord […]

[Written by Stephen Wright] Local bodybuilder Ross Caesar hopes his recent impressive achievements on the international stage have inspired others to chase their goals. Caesar followed up his superb third-place finish in the men’s classic physique at the prestigious IFBB Pro League Masters Olympia in Cluj, Romania, last weekend with a second place in the […]

The Simons Brothers Band has released a new music video for their song ‘Swing,’ directed by Amhed Navarro and produced by MK Video. The video description says, “Travel back in time with ‘Swing,’ another captivating musical masterpiece by The Simons Brothers. With direction from the talented Amhed Navarro and production by MK Video, experience a fun, […]

[Written by Patrick Bean] The advantage available to Wesley and George Bryan as trick shot artists on video are staged scenes that allow for multiple takes to be edited into a single, flawlessly constructed final image of perfection. However, there’s a reason why those prone to attempting crazy stunts belying convention rarely make it to […]

Filmmakers love New Zealand. Its landscapes evoke other worlds, which explains why so much of The Lord of the Rings was filmed there. The country has everything from long, subtropical sandy beaches to active volcanoes. The country’s otherworldliness extends into its atmosphere, where a cloud nicknamed the “Taieri Pet” forms when conditions are right. The …

Continue reading "An Otherworldly Cloud Over New Zealand"

The post An Otherworldly Cloud Over New Zealand appeared first on Universe Today.

Per the Star Trek On Paramount+ Twitter account, this week’s episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks will feature...

Some time ago, I discussed the concept of a mineral moon shot. Basically, you take a photo of the moon, or a stack of photos, and then process them to bring out the colouration of different areas of the surface. Different areas, the seas, the mountains, the plains, have different minerals on the surface that … Continue reading "Another mineral moon"

The United Autoworkers (UAW) is on a new campaign. The union plans to organize workers in hither-to non-union foreign-owned automobile plants in the United States. This campaign may or may not work, but in the long run it will prove futile unless the union can compete in the international market, against all international auto workers.

There are 575,000 autoworkers in the U.S. Nearly 20% work for foreign-owned plants. All of these plants are non-union. The foreign-owned plants were intentionally placed in right-to-work areas, many in the South.

The UAW is likely to have some difficulty succeeding with this campaign. The non-union workers already earn highly competitive wages and benefits. To date, these U.S. workers in plants owned by Toyota, Volkswagen, Hyundai and Honda have shown little interest in unionization.

Why would the union be so interested in this initiative? To preserve its membership. The traditional problem with unions is less the rate of wages they demand and more about the work rules they impose. These work rules reduce the productivity of the unionized plants. That has certainly been the case in the U.S. auto industry. As a result, the UAW is losing membership as UAW auto plants in the U.S. close under the onerous costs the UAW plants carry. If the union can succeed in unionizing the domestic foreign-owned auto plants to the same extent they have unionized the domestic manufacturers’ plants, they will be able to impose the same work rules and produce roughly the same productivity. The result should, in the union’s eyes, be a reduction in the rate of jobs lost in the union.

But there is a problem here. The UAW has already seen that it was unable to stop new non-union plants in the U.S. How will it stop future non-union domestic plants? O.K., let’s say they can do that. Will they also be able to stop all foreign non-union plants from becoming established and growing? Certainly not. Unless the union membership can compete on an international basis with competitive costs and productivity, this unionization effort is wasted money. If it succeeds, the U.S. loses more plants to plants located offshore. Union membership still falls.

It seems that one of the problems for unionized employees is one of definition. Union members often call their compatriots in competing companies “brothers and sisters.” These are certainly not brothers and sisters. In a marketplace they are competitors. Union employees have to be able to beat, or at least stalemate, these competitors or lose their jobs. This is true as long as the UAW can not control the entrance of other less expensive competitors, either in the U.S. or elsewhere.

The long history of the DRAM semiconductor market illustrates this. The U.S. manufacturers of DRAM semiconductors faced intense competition from the Japanese in the 1980s. The domestic industry succeeded in slowing the Japanese by using the International Trade Commission. Then arose new and equally troublesome problems. These problems were DRAM semiconductor facilities in Taiwan and Korea. Eventually, the U.S. industry evolved to the point where it had only one domestic producer of DRAM chips. Intel was one of the early competitors to get out of that market to focus its resources in the more complex, and much more profitable, domestic micro-processor business. SX4MBURBCAJQ

An idea for a space opera.

The post Another Place Beside Us appeared first on Stuck in Customs.

More from the MidJourney archive…

The post Another Gallery of Ideas appeared first on Stuck in Customs.

Last weekend I had a lively discussion with a friend about Pagans she has met who don’t condone or accept the LGBT community, especially as it is intermingled with Paganism.  She has met some of this ilk (I have not) and described how they do not condone non-straight sexuality when it is expressed in Paganism, and how this type also has a limited view of what should be expressed as Paganism, and other expressions are wrong.

I gave her the impression I was surprised to hear this, but it was not surprise, but shock.  I knew intellectually that this type exists (since all types of everything exist,) but this was the first I had heard of actual encounters with such thinking.

We followers of Earth-based spirituality are persecuted and ridiculed enough with us doing it to ourselves.  Think of how Christine O’Donnell (who has no business holding public office, but that is another story) was openly ridiculed when an old clip of her surfaced where she stated she dabbled in witchcraft.  It tanked whatever chances she had in her Senatorial race, and was it because she was the wrong picture to put on the pagan community?  No, it was because any inference that one is a practicing pagan is social suicide in most parts of the United States.

We pagans need to be accepting of each other, and open to the great cosmos that is all of us.  There is no “right” or “wrong” way to be a pagan.

Those who think otherwise are suffering from cognitive dissonance.

Learn Spells the Easy Way! Click HERE!

Dear GreyWolf,

I have a dilemma.  I’m out as a witch to my friends, and most of them have asked me to do spells for them.  Last night, I got two requests.  The first came from a friend who’s mom has pneumonia and may have cancer. She’s very worried, and she wanted to know what all she could do, and what I could do.  I gave her some practical advice, told her to pray and to get as many people as she could to pray, and I told her that my husband and I would so a healing spell for her mother, if she got her mother’s permission, which she did.  Her mother is also in the hospital, so she’s under medical care.

The second request is the one I have the problem with.  Another friend had asked me a while back to do a spell to keep her ex from terrorizing her and her son.  I told her to first go to the police, tell them what was going on, and get an order of protection.  I told her that if she followed through and showed that she was really serious, then I would do a spell of protection for her.  She’s in a very sick relationship with this guy, and I really don’t want her blaming me if he ever leaves her for good.  Last night, she said she didn’t want me to do a spell of protection anymore. She wants me to do a spell that makes him treat her better.  I have some qualms about any spell that “makes” someone do anything.  It gets worse though; then as we were doing some other things, she says under her breath, “It’s a sin, you know.”  I said, “If you think it’s a sin, why would you want me to do a spell for you in the first place?”  Then she said, “Oh, it’s not a sin.”  I’ve pretty much made up my mind on the whole business of doing any spells for her, but I don’t know how to tell her without losing a friend.  She’s not very bright, so no conversation we’ve ever had has gone smoothly.  I have to repeat myself all the time and backtrack on everything to make myself clear to her, and even then, I’m not sure I’m getting through half the time.  Anything I did tell her would have to be broken down into its simplest elements.  Any advice you give me would be well appreciated.

Blessed Be,
Spider

Dear Spider,

I really appreciate your high ethical value. It is a sign of competency and strong professional standards that you want to talk through a dilemma. Doctors and counselors do it all the time. The professionalism comes in knowing when to ask questions, not in always knowing the answers–so I applaud you!

In the first situation, I would do the same thing you did. Any time I’m doing a spell, I want to get everyone’s permission, and you absolutely had permission to do a healing spell. Studies show that prayer actually works, and I know from personal experience that magic, spells, lighting a candle, and raising energy do too. By not limiting your healing to magic, you are helping the spell to work even better–that is, getting medical care is what she needs too.

As for your other friend, well…I feel sorry for her. It’s like someone asks for your help, and then yells at you for doing it wrong. She wants spells done for her, but she believes it is a sin? She doesn’t need magic, she needs a priest, in whatever religion she feels most comfortable. Your magic is not going to work on someone who doesn’t want it to work or who thinks it is wrong–and I don’t care how good a spellcaster you are! The deeply held beliefs about sin are difficult to get rid of, even for new converts to Paganism, and if she’s not converting and doesn’t plan to address these ideas, she won’t get out of them with your help.

Sometimes, ethically, we have to just say no.

This will be hard for you–you’re gifted and people come to you for help. But we can’t learn lessons for other people. You know she’s in a bad relationship, and even if you try and help–no matter how wrong it is–if she doesn’t want it, it won’t work. Ask any Alcoholic working on recovery–she must help herself first. Likely, she’ll have to hit rock bottom, or find some deeply rooted boundary where going back to her terrible relationship is no longer an option.

But, can you have some sympathy for her? She’d rather be abused than be alone, and she’s living with some serious fear. In scary situations, adrenalin tells us to fight or fight…and also freeze. Even though she knows the way out is just like you said, calling the police and getting a protection order, etc, she still doesn’t see the way out. The question for you is this: can you honor her inner divinity to believe that she can solve her own problems?

Being blunt with people by being direct and addressing problems head on actually honors the inherent divinity in another. It means you believe that they don’t have to be coddled or protected, but can handle things if they just have enough information. By asking her to go to the police, you have done your ethical duty and are not required to do more. (Unless you are a mandatory reporter such as a teacher or counselor, and then it depends on your state requirements, so find out what you are required to report. For example, in my state, I’m required to report child abuse but not adult or elder abuse, and I’m required to report suicidal or intent to harm another. But in a pastoral counseling capacity, I am not required to report anything under most circumstances–KNOW YOUR RULES!). Anything after that, magically, is like throwing your energy down a bottomless pit, or running into a brick wall.

If you did a spell for her, and it worked, she’ll blame you. If you do a spell for her and it doesn’t work, she’ll blame you. Because she has to learn her own lessons. She has to take responsibility for herself and her child. By asking you to do it for her is a way of being passive and she is not learning a lesson. It sounds like, for you, she’s hard to talk to, so it may take her a little longer to learn what she needs to do. I guarantee you that many many people both more and less intelligent than her have figured out what they needed to do in her exact situation. And it doesn’t matter how many times somebody told them what they needed to do–they must choose their own path. You want her to change and have the tools to make it happen, but she has to want to. She has to use the tools for herself. And frankly, some people are not ready to change. But if we, as helpers, hold others to the highest standard they are capable of meeting, they will eventually meet it, and may even thank you for it.

We can’t always do the spells that other people want. Sometimes it is not ethical or in the client’s best interest. I often won’t because I don’t want to get involved in their drama spiral, or I don’t want to reward bad behavior with attention. Magically, if you feel you must do something, you can always do a spell for general wellness and gentle spiritual growth. I’ll do something relatively passive, like light a healing candle in their name. The magic will go where it is needed. You feel good because you’ve done something, which will return to you three-fold, theoretically, and you won’t lose any sleep thinking you’re tied up in an ethical dilemma with a person you really don’t want much to do with.

As a counselor, if I had a client like the one you are talking about, I would do either one of two things: 1) refer her to another clinician, since she is not getting what she thinks she wants with me and we are making no headway. It is not ethical for me to continue taking money from someone who is not getting anything out of services after a reasonable amount of time, if another clinician might be able to do more. 2) close her file, and give her the option to return when she commits to therapy. The Witch and the Counselor are essentially in the same business, we just use different tools to help clients create change. Closing a client file, or refering out to another does not make you a failure in any way. It proves that you are holding their needs above your own. Not every spell will work for every body, nor every therapist for every client.

And now, I honor you enough to know that, with enough information, you’ll be able to figure out the best course of action for you. If I had a client like that, she’d be pushing all my buttons. Good luck!

1. New program will see pregnant mothers and babies protected from life-threatening virus  SBS
2. World-leading approach to protect babies from RSV  Department of Health
3. Government-funded RSV vaccines to protect infants from severe disease  Australian Pharmacist
4. 'Very scary': Wagga mum's plea for parents to protect babies through RSV jab  The Daily Advertiser
5. Guild backs free RSV vaccinations  Australian Journal of Pharmacy

1. Cindy Crossthwaite's estranged husband faces Supreme Court murder trial over mother of three's death  ABC News
2. 'Deep-seated hatred' for estranged wife led to killing, jury told  9News
3. 'Deep-seated hatred' for estranged wife led to killing, court hears  9News

1. Car crashes with another outside pub during police chase in Sydney’s southwest  7NEWS
2. ‘Flying past me’: Two hurt as car smashes into fence after police chase  Daily Telegraph
3. Critical incident investigation into crash following police pursuit  Sydney Morning Herald
4. Violent carjacking linked to Sydney crash that split car in two, police say  9News
5. Update on crash after police chase  news.com.au

The Eerie Brothers and the Witches of Autumn Sheldon Higdon Scary Dairy Press LLC (September 4, 2023) Reviewed by Nora B. Peevy The Eerie Brothers and the Witches of Autumn finds Horace and Edgar, the twin Eerie brothers, battling monsters to stop Hex from collecting one of the four globes to absorb the abilities of […]

The TV news tonight interviewed various locals who oppose the proposed new runway at Heathrow, some of them in an emotional state. One lady said that she had lived in Harmondsworth for over twenty years - but the airport opened in 1946, since when anyone who cared to elevate their gaze might have deduced that there was an airport across the Bath Road.

Knowing that you've found signs of life beyond Earth may not be as clear-cut and simple as one might think.

New research suggests liquid water might be hiding under the surface of Mars. Could life be there too?

Looking to the past to guide the search for life.