Gay Israeli IDF rape charges dropped

(IMR Scary Tales) Three true Jeffrey Epstein horror stories animated

(The Jimmy Dore Show)

(The Jimmy Dore Show)

Unexpected rules for Amish females

Karen M. Johnson-Weiner

There's little use in talking about the American Amish, much less Amish females, as if they were all members of a monolithic group.

The reality is that there are multiple "Amish" orders, all with different rules collected in a broad set of often-unspoken guidelines known as the Ordnung.

These rules dictate the lives of everyone in the patriarchal Germanic Amish Christian faith, laying out community-specific guidelines on everything from the depth of a man's hat brim to whether or not it's okay to have a refrigerator in one's home.

Anything she can do, I can do better. I'm a man!

Generally speaking, all Amish settlements emphasize plain, unadorned dress styles, rural living, pacifism, and some separation from the outside world — and no, they're not the same as Mennonites or Quakers or Shakers or Puritans.

Ruined by the lavender menace?

When it comes to both community and family life, females are almost always expected to be subservient to men. Yet, they also take the lead on many homemaking matters, including child rearing, food preparation, cleaning, and working on the farm.

It all seems rather simple. Amish girls are expected to observe rules that demand they remain subservient, wear plain clothing, and remember to be faithful and modest into womanhood.

However, these directives can get quite surprising and sometimes elaborate, depending on where a female lives and her personal convictions.

I can run my own biz.

For instance, it wouldn't be beyond the pale to see an Amish woman leave the family farm and run her own business.

Think you already know everything about the rules of an Amish woman's life? Think again.

The rules of Amish female power are more complex than most Americans think

Being submissive is a common rule for Amish girls, but it's not just a matter of going along with a father, brother, uncle, or husband's decisions or quietly following the rules of male church elders.

In fact, all Amish people are expected to submit in one way or another. Males are directed to submit to God and to treat their wives well and care for them with love and respect (though there are also reports of widespread abuse in some communities).

There's also a rather tricky biblical verse, Galatians 3:28, in which readers are informed that "there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus."

To balance this, the Amish generally agree that males and females ought to have separate roles in their communities but that the work done by females is theoretically just as important as that of males. And though Amish females may not have official power in their communities, they wield practical power in everyday life, such as when they organize home or church activities.

• The film My Big Fat Greek Wedding made this age-old distinction clear: "The man is the head of the house, the man is the head of the house...but the woman is the neck."

Everyone is responsible for his or her own spiritual life, too. As one woman in the highly conservative Swartzentruber Amish group states:

"The Amish way is that the men have to go ahead of the women [during baptism], but the women get baptized just as well as the men do." More: grunge.com (Unexpected rules Amish women have to follow)

The Lives of Amish Women

Karen M. Johnson-Weiner's on Amish Women

(Kindle Edition) Author Karen M. Johnson-Weiner has 4.2 out of 5 stars (with 6 reviews). Presenting a challenge to popular stereotypes, this book is an intimate exploration of the religiously defined roles of Amish females and how these roles have changed over time.

Continuity and change, tradition and dynamism shape the lives of the Amish and make their experiences both distinctive and diverse.

On the one hand, a principled commitment to living Old Order lives, purposely out of step with the cultural mainstream, has provided Amish females with a good deal of constancy. Even in relatively more progressive Amish communities, women still engage in activities common to their counterparts in earlier times: gardening, homemaking, and childrearing.

On the other hand, these persistent themes of domestic labor and the responsibilities of motherhood have been affected by profound social, economic, and technological changes up through the 21st century, shaping Amish females' lives in different ways and resulting in increasingly varied experiences. 

In The Lives of Amish Women, Johnson-Weiner draws on her 35 years of fieldwork in Amish communities and her correspondence with Amish women to consider how the religiously defined roles of Amish women have changed as Amish churches have evolved.

Looking in particular at females' lives and activities at different ages and in different communities, Johnson-Weiner explores the relationship between changing patterns of social and economic interaction with mainstream society and women's family, community, and church roles.

What does it mean, Johnson-Weiner asks, for an Amish woman to be humble when she is the owner of a business that serves people internationally?

Is a childless Amish woman or a single Amish woman still a "Keeper at Home" in the same way as a woman raising a family? What does Gelassenheit—giving oneself up to God's will [not in a slavish way but rather "'tranquil submission' in the Christian mystical tradition"]—mean in a subsistence-level agrarian Amish community, and is it at all comparable to what it means in a wealthy settlement where some members may be millionaires?

Illuminating the key role Amish women play in maintaining the spiritual and economic health of their church communities, this wide-ranging book touches on a number of topics, including early Anabaptist women and Amish pioneers to North America;

• stages of life;
• marriage and family;
• events that bring women together;
• women as breadwinners;
• women who do not meet the Amish norm (single women, childless women, widows); and
• even what books Amish women are reading.

Aimed at anyone who is interested in the Amish experience, The Lives of Amish Women will help readers understand better the costs and benefits of being an Amish woman in a modern world and will challenge the stereotypes, myths, and imaginative fictions about Amish women that have shaped how they are viewed by mainstream society. More

Quitting alcohol: first 30 days

SV116 UR QUIT ALCOHOL IN 30 DAYS 9x16 - Now I'm smart and clever again

• The World's Most Effective Calming Tonics | Calming Co.

Dopamine: Take Brain Back | Dr. Lembke | MasterClass

Sexist rules FEMALES face, then and now

(Whispered History Tales) Rules females faced in ancient times (many of which still linger)

• Did the Buddha accept women as nuns (bhikkhunīs)?
• Re-establishing female full ordination in Buddhism

Four Jews TRY to celebrate Xmas in Israel

(Insightful Nomad) What happens when four Jews try celebrating Christmas in the Holy Land?

• Christians are hated, treated horribly, and even spat on and attacked by Jewish Israelis. Try visiting, American Evangelicals; see what happens.

Who was the Jews' old God Moloch?

(The Legends of History) I studied EVERY mention of Moloch in the Jewish-Christian Bible. Here is the scary truth. And The God commanded us to KILL, so we had to listen or else he'd "turn his face" against us

• Who in the world is Moloch?

Was Hitler an anti-Jew conspiracy theorist?

(Der Kommandant English) Mein Kampf (My Struggle) is Hitler's best-selling book

Mr. Hitler's Mein Kampf dust jacket

Who's really enlightened? (Doug's Dharma)

Psycho state Israel wants famine, not peace

(Double Down News) World's most psychopathic country: Israel

Control Wikipedia to control the narrative

(The Jimmy Dore Show) Israel training Wikipedia.org editors to push pro-Zionist Israel bias

(The Jimmy Dore Show) Wisty Winston w/ Dave DeCamp (antiwar.com)

Is sex with robots humanity's future?

New $2,000 female ROBOTS from China — are sexy artificially intelligent (AI) humanoids

Sex with robots is coming: Top 6 hottest new female sex robots and their cost | AI Tech Academy

That's not a soulless machine. That's my Mother!

Now robots can get pregnant and carry human seed to term, with children naturally clinging and identifying with AI high technology as caretaker entity. (Welcome, Homo sapiens sapiens or Homo technologi to the planet to take their place among the many human species who have lived out their lives on this plane, this simulation, or this tended garden, whatever it may be. The ET gods should be very happy at this "advance" as we get further and further away from our connection to Gaia/Bhumi/Tierra).

I blame Scarlett Johansson-Jost.

(Top Viral) Humans wouldn't really take up with machines, would we? So, say we did, we wouldn't then fall in "love" and get all clingy and attached to machines, computers, AI large language models the way we grasp at and cling to our iPhones, which are built to addict us with their wave resonance frequencies and gaming (gambling) protocols set to reel us in like dopamine fiends, would we? Wouldn't we? We are already doing it. And movies like Her and Ex Machina are normalizing it, with Hollywood ready to release a slew of propaganda films to guide society in either direction, towards sex with robots being totally normalized or considered a perversion, crime, and reason to make perverts outcastes. It's as if we are not safe from the influence of porn (North Hollywood) and propaganda (Hollywood) even in the South in small town Kentucky:

Kentucky sheriff executes judge in chambers, exposing small town's secret sex ring

When does the ScarJo sexbot launch?

(Brian Entin Investigates) Sheriff murders judge in chambers, which reveals secret sex ring, corruption, coerced sex crimes by nominally Christian officials (judges, jailers, deputies, and anyone with power) in small town Kentucky with its drug addicts and accused innocents/convicted criminals, who are fed more drugs at sex parties to have no credibility if they were ever to speak out and blow the whistle on these abuses.

• Eds., Wisdom Quarterly

Indonesia: Punk vs. Sharia Law

(VICE) Punk Rock vs. Sharia Law in world's largest Muslim nation, formerly Buddhist Indonesia

How earthquakes create gold veins

Buddhist Sabbath: Full Buck Moon

What is the Buck Moon? Biggest, farthest, orangest full moon

The Buddhist Sabbath Day: Uposatha

What's the big deal? There's sila, dana, samadhi

The Uposatha day is a Buddhist day of observance, in existence since the Buddha's time (600 BCE) and still being kept today by sincere practitioners of Buddhism [1, 2]. The Buddha taught that the Uposatha day is for "the cleansing of the defiled mind (heart)," resulting in inner calm and joy [3]. On this day, both lay and ordained members of the Sangha (spiritual community) intensify their practice, deepen their knowledge of the practice, and express communal commitment through millennia-old acts of lay-monastic reciprocity. On these days, Buddhist lay followers make a conscious effort to keep the Eight Precepts or, as the tradition suggests, the Ten Precepts (or keeping perfectly the everyday Five Precepts). It is a day for putting into intensive practice the Buddha's teachings and meditation. More

(English Buddhist Monk) Full moon Uposatha lay practice for equanimity

CAUTION! JULY 10th FULL MOON will make WISHES come TRUE…but there's a catch!
(Eye of Wisdom) The full moon on July 10th is not just a light in the sky, it’s a manifestation magnifier. This moon pulls our desires to the surface, reflects them back at us…and amplifies them into reality. But there's a catch...

⚠️ This full moon is karmic, magnetic, and emotionally revealing. Our energy, our thoughts, our frequency, all of it is being reflected back at us in high definition.

✨ In this video:

• Why this Full Moon unlocks manifestation energy (with a twist)
• What thoughts and intentions we MUST get clear on now
• This is our early warning: July 10 isn’t “just another moon.”

It’s a spiritual amplifier. Whatever we’re broadcasting, this moon is listening.

📃 Relevant sources 📖

• Tolle, Eckhardt (1997) — The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment. Namaste Publishing.

Virtues of the Buddhist Lunar Observance

(WatSanFran) Virtues of the Lunar Observance | Uposatha Sutta | Animated Buddhist Stories

• #spirituality #astrology #astronomy #universe #FullMoonJuly2025 #July10FullMoon #ManifestationWarning #MoonEnergy #SpiritualAwakening #FullMoonManifestation #EnergyUpdate #ChosenOnes #KarmicMoon #MoonRituals
• Eye of Wisdom, July 8, 2025; CC Liu, Crystal Q. (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Why is Europe so ANTI-Christian?

Why Europe is insanely anti-religious: (Versed) May 25, 2025: The End of Christianity in Europe. There are many reasons, like rampant child molestation by the Christian Church in all its forms.

Man shall not live by bread (gluten) alone, but many ultra-processed chemicals, too. Amen.

Is karma real? Deeds cause results?

Karma (doing)? That's so dumb! Whatever I do, it'll never come back to me. I can get away.

Flying squirrel karma or phala? - Animal actions?

Previous video has squirrel who flies tiny plane. Real "flying squirrel" flies when tossed, then 😲

Born of the Fruits of Deeds

Teachings of Kamma, Rebirth, Saṃsāra

(Ud 3.1) Thus have I heard. At one time the Buddha was staying near Sāvatthī in Jeta’s Grove at the multimillionaire's monastery.

At that time a certain Buddhist monk was sitting close to the Buddha, legs crossed, with body straight.

As a result (vipaka) of past deeds (karma), he suffered painful, sharp, severe, and acute feelings, which he endured unbothered, mindfully with clear comprehension.

Narrating Karma and Rebirth

The Buddha saw him meditating mindfully enduring that pain. Then, understanding the situation, the Buddha expressed this inspired utterance:

“A monastic who has left behind all deeds (karma), shaking off the dust of past deeds, unselfish, unwavering, unaffected, has no need to complain.”

• Kamma Vipākaja Sutta (Ud 3.1)—Ven. Sujato (translation)
• Amazing video shorts: How to handle the cops (graphic)

Bhikkhu Bodhi, what is "karma"?

The Four Kinds of Karma with Bhikkhu Bodhi

(BAUS Chuang Yen Monastery) June 27, 2022: In this Dharma talk, Bhikkhu Bodhi discusses The Numerical Discourses (Anguttara Nikaya) AN 4.233-238, a series of sutras in which the historical Buddha explains the four kinds of karma (kamma, deed, action):

1. dark karma with dark result
2. bright karma with bright result
3. dark-and-bright karma with dark-and-bright result
4. karma that is neither dark nor bright with neither-dark-nor-bright result or the karma that leads to the ending of karma.

Bhikkhu Bodhi (BAUS, Carmel, New York, 6/18/22); Dhr. Seven (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly

Science: How bad could one beer be?

How dangerous could one beer be?

(Howtown) Welcome to HOWTOWN! A small but mighty team of two (Joss Fong and Adam Cole) digs into the evidence behind commonly held "facts" and claims in the news.

CHAPTERS

• 00:00 Intro
• 01:22 Drinking appears beneficial
• 03:54 The first mistake
• 05:00 Hank's Razor
• 07:34 Rethinking drinking
• 08:53 A failed trial
• 10:43 A new genetic tool
• 13:04 How risky is drinking?
• 14:50 How dangerous is alcohol?
  

• ASK HOWTOWN A QUESTION: howtown.co/contact

SELECTED SOURCES

• 

  How much alcohol is healthy and safe to drink?

  1981 Bay Area study pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7258861
• Association between daily alcohol intake and risk of all-cause mortality jamanetwork.com/journals/jama...
• Lancet mega-study of 195 countries thelancet.com/journals/la...
• Kiran Biddinger’s mendelian randomization study of cardiovascular effects jamanetwork.com/journals/jama...
• FULL SOURCE LIST: docs.google.com/document...

Howtown is supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (sloan.org), in association with IMI (theimi.co), and is grateful for the generous support of the Patreon Town Council.*

The two images of televisions marked with an asterisk (*) during the Australia and Canada news montage were generated using MidJourney. To keep Howtown going and get bonus content: Join PATREON: howtown.

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*Patreon Town Council: Bev Fong Chris Wubbels Sean Barrett Mike Purvis Ziver Imren Jim Jon Hewett Albychen Hernando Garcia Vladimir Khalimovskiy Sean Talon Evan Hass Mark Tinker Julian Mayorga L.A. O’Connor Hoang Anh Ky Mikey Limotta Marcos Huerta Joaquim Salles Sam Gaty Verner Sääsk Jason Dunlap Parag Mallick Paul Monaghan Edgar Sutawika.

• Joss Fong, Adam Cole, Howtown, Jan. 10, 2025; Ashley Wells, Pfc. Sandoval (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Pope Leo on gay marriage and abortion

Polish gay couple travel to Vatican with Pride flag begging Pope for 'help' (The Pink News)

LGBTQIA+ community in meltdown after Pope Leo XIV says marriage is between a man and a woman

But I wanted to a priest-trainee in seminary!!

(Sky News Australia) May 18, 2025: Pope Leo XIV was inaugurated (installed) with a ceremony in the Holy See (Vatican City, a small country in the heart of) Rome [that continues the reign of the Holy Roman Empire over the world] over the weekend, which saw global leaders come together to mark the momentous occasion.

• VIDEO: Our beautiful new Black American Pope

Youth Synod document shows Vatican evolution
on LGBT topics (New Ways Ministry)

The appointment of Pope Leo XIV sees a return to the Catholic Church’s roots. The new [Italian-Black, Creole] pope confirmed in a meeting with the Vatican diplomatic corps that the family is founded on the “stable union between a man and a woman” [rather than LGBTQIA+ unions, emphasizing only one woman and one man, putting the kibosh on our polyamorous dreams of multiple married partners if we stay in the Church.]

Friar, what about Catholic sex?

Father, is Olivia provoking lust on stage? - What religion is she and the other pop celebrities?

(Breaking in the Habit w/Father Casey Cole, OFM) Priest answers questions about sexual ethics

Religions overlap, but just because something came first doesn't mean that Catholicism stole it or appropriated it for self-serving reasons, like growing to encompass every part of the earth, says Casey Cole OFM.

What dominates US media, sex or violence?

What religion is Olivia Rodrigo (Beliefnet), the All-American Bitch?

.

Without Buddha I Could Not be a Christian

Without Buddha I Could Not be

Paul F. Knitter has 4.5 out of 5 stars after 447 ratings with this book. An honest, unflinching tale of re-finding one's faith, from one of the world's most famous theologians Without Buddha I Could Not Be a Christian narrates how esteemed theologian Paul F. Knitter overcame a crisis of faith by looking to Buddhism for inspiration. From prayer to how Christianity views life after death, Knitter argues that a Buddhist standpoint can encourage a more person-centered conception of Christianity, where individual religious experience comes first and liturgy and tradition second. Moving and revolutionary, this book will inspire Christians everywhere. More

• Buddhism and Christianity
• Buddhism in the Philippines
• Catholic Church in the Philippines
• How a dad made a friend dig his own grave and kill himself after raping daughter, 6 - (Daily Express US)
• Fr. Casey Cole; Paul F. Knitter; Team Recovering Catholics (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Karma? Why atheism with Ricky Gervais

(Felepa) Atheist comedians, Part 1: A variety of comedians go on about religions oppression

Ricky Gervais: Why I'm an Atheist

By Ricky Gervais, Wall Street Journal via Dan Pizarro

"You can't say that!" - "You can."

Ricky Gervais is the writer and star of HBO's Ricky Gervais Out of England 2: The Stand-Up Special (website: rickygervais.com).

"Why don't you believe in God?" I get that question all the time. I always try to give a sensitive, reasoned answer. This is usually awkward, time consuming, and pointless.

Buddhism and the God-Idea

People who believe in God don't need proof of his [her, its] existence, and they certainly don't want evidence to the contrary. They are happy with their belief. They even say things like, "It's true to me" and "It's faith."

I still give my logical answer because I feel that not being honest would be patronizing and impolite. It is ironic, therefore, that to say, "I don't believe in God because there is absolutely no scientific evidence for his existence" or "from what I've heard, the very definition is a logical impossibility in this known universe" comes across as both patronizing and impolite. More

Stand up comedian Ricky Gervais: I am WOKE now! - I'll be a humanist, a hedonist, a materialist

For those who care about this sort of thing, here is a link (wsj.com) to an essay by British standup comedian Ricky Gervais about his reasons for being an atheist and how he deals with it in a world that is predominately hostile towards his lack of belief. His views also happen to be my own (Dan Piraro).

Buddhism is non-theistic, not atheistic

All of them seem convincing. I won't believe any

What's the difference? Well, a theist thinks he knows there is a God. An atheist thinks he knows there isn't. An agnostic doesn't know, isn't sure, or is afraid to say/decide, whereas a nontheist knows and says that whether there is a God or not, what has that to do with my enlightenment, my awakening, my liberation (salvation, emancipation, deliverance) from ignorance, craving, hatred, fear, suffering, and rebirth? The disappointment/pain I experience comes about as the results of my deeds (actions of mind, speech, and body), my views, words, and conduct. If there is a God that's still true. I can see it as true. If there is no God that's still true. I can see that for myself, reflecting in my own life along the lines of the Buddha's discourse called the Kalama Sutta.

Why did the Buddha have so many followers?

Now, people think the Kalama Sutra says, "Think whatever you want, and don't believe whatever you don't want." That's not what it says at all. Keep reading. The Kalamas didn't know how to decide which spiritual teacher or teaching (doctrine) was right. They all sounded good and said the others were wrong. When the Buddha came to teach, they first questioned him about this problem of not knowing who or what to believe since they all sounded good and had a point. So the Buddha taught them in such a way that it did not depend on him or his authority, reasoning, charisma, or anything else but their own experience. He asked them the question, Can you see from your own experience that greed, hatred, and delusion arise in a person for their own harm, the harm of others, and the harm of society? Or how is it? In the same way, the same question may be asked in reverse: Can you see from your own experience that nongreed (letting go), nonhatred (love, compassion, joy in others' joy, unbiased calm), nondelusion (wisdom, knowing, clarity) arise in a person for their own benefit, the benefit of others, and the benefit of society? The Kalamas could see that, not as a belief or blind faith in this or that teacher but from their own personal experience in life. If you can see that, then maybe you can see that bringing about the end of greed. hatred, and delusion is good and a teaching (doctrine or Dharma) that does that is of benefit and maybe something you'd like to learn. They did. So the Buddha taught them without reference to books, authorities, teachers, views, or biases. They were amazed. This made sense. This made sense because they could see that it was true from their own observations and experiences not someone else's.

The Buddha was not a teacher of God, not a prophet or disciple of God. He was a teacher of Karma, an advocate of the right understanding that things happen to us because of our deeds, life after life. What happens to us in any existence is intimately wrapped up in our deeds of body, speech, and mind (the views, opinions, preferences, and biases we hold). "Karma: It's everywhere you're going to be."

Shaolin Master Shi Heng Yi on Karma as "God"? - The founder of Hindu-ism is Adi Shankara

who did not invent the Eternal Way of Life (Sanatan Dharma), Vedas, yoga but turned made the ism

• Could Christians mean impersonal Karma when they speak of a personal God alive in the world? "Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows [whatever deeds one does], that will one also reap [experience the result of]" (Christian Bible, Galatians 6:7, biblehub.com).
• Deeds (karma, actions) are like seeds (things we sow) capable of maturing (vipaka, ripening) and bearing much fruit (phala, results). This impersonal karma process is unfailing, all-knowing, all-seeing, as the Abrahamic "God" is said to be.
• Better translations? Amplified Bible: "Do not be deceived, God is not mocked [He will not allow Himself to be ridiculed, nor treated with contempt, nor allow His precepts to be scornfully set aside]; for whatever a [person] sows, this and this only is what [that person] will reap." Christian Standard Bible: "Don’t be deceived: God is not mocked. For whatever a person sows [one] will also reap," Contemporary English Version: "You cannot fool God, so don't make a fool of yourself! You will harvest what you plant." GOD'S WORD® Translation: "Make no mistake about this: You can never make a fool out of God. Whatever you plant is what you'll harvest [as a result of having planted it]." Good News Translation: "Do not deceive yourselves; no one makes a fool of God. You will reap [in return] exactly what you plant."

• COMICS: Dan Piraro's Bizarro on religion
• Ricky Gervais on science, Ricky Gervais (blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy, Dec. 19, 2010) via cartoonist Dan Piraro ("Holiday Message," BizarroBlog);Dhr. Seven, Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), Seth Auberon (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly