Nice People Thread No. 15, a Cyber Summer

Pyxis

What explosions?




(Goes off to google......)


Edit. Oh my God!

chris_m

PasturesNew wrote: »

Some hours ago the DM had a piece - showing the recording of the live stream up to the second it went dead. Bit bl00dy tasteless!

Isn't "bl00dy tasteless" and DM in the same sentence a form of tautology?

vivatifosi

I worry about Christians in the Middle East. They are more and more persecuted, but resettle them somewhere safer and Christianity loses a foothold in many of its earliest locations.

As someone who is nominally a Christian, for whatever reason I'm drawn to the story of St Paul and the Road to Damascus. 2000 years later, what has become of that road?

I have no idea what the answer is, it just feels intractably sad.

zagubov

Years ago (back in the early 80s in fact)I worked alongside a woman from Iraq who said as a Christian her church made up about 10% of that country's population. In this century I never hear talk of Christians in Iraq at all, and I wonder what became of them.

GDB2222

zagubov wrote: »

Years ago (back in the early 80s in fact)I worked alongside a woman from Iraq who said as a Christian her church made up about 10% of that country's population. In this century I never hear talk of Christians in Iraq at all, and I wonder what became of them.

According to Wikipedia, the Christian population has dropped from 1.5m to 450k. Or it's stayed much the same. There's been no census, so nobody knows for sure.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_Iraq

Pyxis

Good morning, Pastures!








Just done another speed test. My download speeds have been 2 point something....current one is 2.18.
Compared with some of you lot that seems very slow. It's not fibre. However, it seems to be fast enough to me, most of the time ( when the internet's not down, that is!).
Having said that, on the rare occasion that I'm downloading something from the cloud, it is very slow, so maybe that's where the benefit lies in having fibre. i don't download films or programmes...... the one time I did, last year, it took forever.


The upload speed has varied from 0.40 to currently 1.47. Is this due to time of day? ( i.e. Less demand in the early hours?)
I once tried to upload photos into the cloud, and in the end I had to give up, because it was hours and hours!

vivatifosi

Morning wide awake club!

Pyxis

The light is starting to filter through the curtains.

No blackbird warbling yet. That's odd. He usually starts pre-dawn.

LydiaJ

GDB2222 wrote: »

According to Wikipedia, the Christian population has dropped from 1.5m to 450k. Or it's stayed much the same. There's been no census, so nobody knows for sure.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_Iraq

These people, who work supporting them, reckon it's down to 250k.

Now, just an estimated 250,000 Christians remain. Since the US-led invasion of Iraq, anti-Western (and by association anti-Christian) sentiments have grown, and Islamic extremism has been strengthened by the civil war in neighbouring Syria. This has led to IS declaring their 'caliphate' (Islamic state) in north-west Iraq and parts of Syria.

There are few Christians lefts in IS-controlled parts of Iraq...
Many Christians have fled to the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan. The church in Kurdistan has been reaching out to refugees fleeing IS; many provide refugees with shelter, food, medicines and other essentials. Father Daniel, who runs activities for children in a refugee camp in Erbil, says "I hope that these kids are going to have a new life without any wars, to live in peace."

However, even in areas of Iraq that aren't controlled by IS, society appears to be growing more Islamic, making life more difficult for Christians. Christian women in Baghdad and Basra have been forced to veil themselves in order to feel safe outside of their homes, and there has been a greater pressure for Christians to observe Ramadan.

silvercar

We begin Passover tonight.

Not sure what is more stressful, all the pre-passover cleaning and cooking* or how everyone around the table is going to interact tonight. Rare occasion for in-laws and mother to be with us at the same time, add the boys and DS2-GF to the mix and hope everyone will get along!

*Passover story is of the Jews leaving Egypt in a rush, to symbolise that the bread they had baked did not have time to rise, any food containing bread products is forbidden, which basically means cooking every meal from scratch without any foods containing wheat or rice. as there are a lot of family staying, that means a lot of cooking.