No evidence of ‘white genocide’ in SA, say experts – The Citizen

No evidence of ‘white genocide’ in SA, say experts – The Citizen:

There is no evidence of a genocide of white people or a specific group in the white community, according to an ISS senior consultant.

Telling the world there is a “white genocide” in South Africa to attract international attention is reckless, as no one has provided evidence of it, according to political experts.

As flags flew at half-mast at the US embassy in Pretoria yesterday to mourn the 11 people killed in a massacre at a Pittsburgh synagogue by a white nationalist, a group called Black Monday gathered outside the embassy claiming to be telling the world about white genocide in South Africa.

What the ‘Grievance Studies’ Hoax Means - The Chronicle of Higher Education

What the ‘Grievance Studies’ Hoax Means - The Chronicle of Higher Education:

To hoax morally suspect fields like economics, one of the fake papers concocted by James Lindsay, Helen Pluckrose, and Peter Boghossian and accepted for publication in Hypatia argued, is morally righteous. To hoax morally righteous fields like gender studies, on the other hand, is morally suspect.

This hilarious little piece of meta-textualism shows that the scholars behind Sokal Squared are more conversant in postmodern discourse — and more attuned to its lighter modes — than some of their critics seem to assume. It also shows that they know their enemies well enough to predict their reactions with uncanny accuracy.

Mount Athos, a Male-Only Holy Retreat, Is Ruffled by Tourists and Russia - The New York Times

Mount Athos, a Male-Only Holy Retreat, Is Ruffled by Tourists and Russia - The New York Times:

For almost as long as there have been monks here, women have been barred — considered a distraction and undue competition for the Virgin Mary, the patron saint. There are no hotels, no bars, no stores, no television and no swimming, plus a daily quota limits visitors.

Travelers arrive on boats providing the only public access to the peninsula. Collectively, the monasteries play host to an average of 1,200 people nightly, all without charge.

The difficult access and the high monastery walls once built against marauding pirates seemed to keep time at bay, too, but now the modern world penetrates on cellphone signals and internet connections.

Here's What's Really Going on with the Orthodox Church in Ukraine and Russia | The National Interest

Here's What's Really Going on with the Orthodox Church in Ukraine and Russia | The National Interest:

I am starting to get annoyed at the number of commentators who have no background in Orthodox ecclesiology and scant knowledge of Byzantine, Ukrainian and Russian history or about the contemporary realities of religious life throughout the former Soviet Union. These pundits nevertheless feel confident to deliver sweeping pronouncements about the Ukrainian Orthodox Church situation and its ramifications for the Moscow Patriarchate and the Orthodox Church as a whole. At a minimum, one would hope that anyone offering commentary would be well versed in the disputes over the interpretations of the canons of the Council of Chalcedon (451), the controversy over the creation of the Autocephalous Polish Orthodox Church nearly a century ago (in 1924), and the significance of the Pochaiv conclave (which attempted to create a unified Ukrainian Orthodox Church in 1942). Ignorance of these and other developments should be seen as disqualifying to offering anything that purports to be an expert opinion on the matter.

Whiteness Is Blackness, and Blackness Is Whiteness - Commentary

Whiteness Is Blackness, and Blackness Is Whiteness - Commentary:

In its most basic form, intersectionality is a theory that posits interlinked and intersecting forms of oppression. For example, a woman of color can experience discrimination for being both a woman and a person of color; this sounds logical enough, but its deeper claim is that human interaction arises not from an individual’s behavior but is entirely due to the social group to which he or she belongs. Additionally, all so-called knowledge is merely the subjective reality of one’s group. Knowledge is a construct, not an independent thing. Finally, the proponents of intersectionality believe that the only social motive that exists is power.

What Really Happened in Constantinople Last Week

What Really Happened in Constantinople Last Week:

Although this decision seems to deal with the remote past, it has a wide array of political and ecclesial implications that apply today. The most important ecclesial implication is that the schism in Ukraine has effectively ended. Those faithful who belonged to unrecognized Orthodox churches are now in communion with the rest of Orthodox churches worldwide. The leaders of the unrecognized churches were restored to their episcopal and priestly degrees. Constantinople thus exercised its right to entertain appeals from outside its own jurisdiction. Constantinople also invited these churches to form a new ecclesial structure, which it intends to grant full independence (or autocephaly) by issuing a founding document, called a Tomos, to it.

Putin Is the Biggest Loser of Orthodox Schism - Bloomberg

Putin Is the Biggest Loser of Orthodox Schism - Bloomberg:

Moscow’s only hope in this lose-lose situation is that Ukrainians will shoot themselves in the foot, as they’ve often done before. To receive autocephaly from the Ecumenical Patriarchate, Ukrainian Christians must unite and select a leader. Whether this will happen depends in part on the two clerics reinstated by the Ecumenical Patriarchate – Filaret, who was excommunicated by the Russian church in 1997 for splitting off the so-called Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kiev Patriarchate, and Metropolitan Makariy, who runs the relatively small Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church.

Ukraine Is Dangerously Close to a Religious War - Bloomberg

Ukraine Is Dangerously Close to a Religious War - Bloomberg:

So far, Russia has taken a hard line. The Moscow Patriarchate has portrayed autocephaly in Ukraine as an unacceptable catastrophe. It has officially condemned Bartholomew’s intention to grant Poroshenko’s request, and has even stopped using Bartholomew’s name in prayers. Given the stakes, it’s entirely possible that factional violence could break out, much as happened when Russia incited parts of Eastern Ukraine to seek independence. To prevent that from happening, Russian and Ukrainian leaders must display wisdom and restraint.

Russia, Ukraine, and the battle for religion | European Council on Foreign Relations

Russia, Ukraine, and the battle for religion | European Council on Foreign Relations:

There are no fewer than three main Orthodox churches in Ukraine. Why so many? One of these, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC), was set up in 1921 but banned under Stalin in 1930. It survived in the diaspora and returned to Ukraine in 1990. The current trio derives from an unsuccessful attempt in 1992, just after Ukraine’s political independence in 1991, to broker a merger between the UAOC and the existing Orthodox hierarchy in Ukraine. The merger created a new church, dubbed the Ukrainian Orthodox Church – Kievan Patriarchate (OUC-KP). But there was resistance on both sides: many in the UAOC refused to join, because they saw the existing Orthodox hierarchy as compromised by the KGB. While most of that compromised hierarchy refused to join the Kievan Patriarchate, for additional reasons of ‘canonicity’, traditionalism, and Russian nationalism. They remained under the Russian church, but relabelled it as the Ukrainian Orthodox Church – Moscow Patriarchate (OUC-MP). Just for good measure, there is a fourth church, the Greek Catholic Church – half-Orthodox and half-Catholic – banned in 1946, but revived in 1989, largely based in western Ukraine.

“The Church does not bow to politicians”—Patriarch of Alexandria / OrthoChristian.Com

“The Church does not bow to politicians”—Patriarch of Alexandria / OrthoChristian.Com:

Pat. Theodoros also reiterated that he would speak to the primates of all the Local Orthodox Churches about what he “has seen with his own eyes” in Ukraine, as he promised in Odessa, here adding, “I will also tell all the patriarchs that the Church does not bow to politicians. The Church has the Apostolic rules… The canonical Church is guided by the canons. It lives by and will live by the canons.”

Hierarchs from around the Orthodox world have criticized Ukraine’s political interference in Church matters, and a Kiev district court recently decided to hear a case on President Poroshenko’s competency to interfere in Church affairs.

Ukraine Is Dangerously Close to a Religious War - Bloomberg

Ukraine Is Dangerously Close to a Religious War - Bloomberg:

For several centuries, since the fall of the Byzantine Empire, Moscow has pretended to the role of a “Third Rome” — a political and religious capital that would unite the Orthodox world, or at least its Slavic part. To that end, in the 17th century, the Russian church subsumed its Ukrainian neighbor. Even after the Soviet Union broke apart in 1991, most Orthodox believers in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus remained united under one spiritual leader, the Patriarch of Moscow. In 2016, Putin inaugurated a colossal statue of St. Vladimir, the Grand Prince of Kiev who established Russian Orthodoxy, next to the Kremlin — indicating that Russia aspires to be his true heir.

Solzhenitsyn and Distributism

Solzhenitsyn and Distributism:

At first sight, it would seem that G.K. Chesterton and Alexander Solzhenitsyn have very little in common. The one has a reputation for jollity and rambunctiousness, the other for sobriety and solemn sternness. One penned swashbuckling fantasies about lovable eccentrics, the other wrote gritty works of realism set in prison camps or cancer wards. Although both have been described as prophets, Chesterton is a laughing prophet, capering with the anarchic joie de vivre of St. Francis; Solzhenitsyn, on the other hand, is a searingly serious seer, blasting the follies of the age with the excoriating scorn of a modern-day Jeremiah. In spite of such appearances to the contrary, and as I hope to show, these two giants of twentieth century literature are, in fact, kindred spirits who share the same political philosophy and the same religious orthodoxy.

How to build your own Neural Network from scratch in Python

How to build your own Neural Network from scratch in Python:

How to build your own Neural Network from scratch in Python
A beginner’s guide to understanding the inner workings of Deep Learning

The English Language is doomed

Robert Fisk on the decline of English

My favourite is “space”. I belong to a generation in which space usually related to Outer Space, in which my British comic hero Dan Dare forever battled the Mekon, the over-brained monster who sought world dictatorship over all science from a levitating chair. More mundanely, “space” was the rather dull word my mum and dad used in furnishing a room. Is there enough “space” for the wardrobe in the upstairs bedroom? But no more.
Here, from my personal collection of clippings over 15 years – all can be referenced to the culprits if readers desire – are new uses for “space”:

“A spectacular space in which exploration in depth can take place” (Tony Blair describing a London house in which “interfaith interaction” can occur); “a socially relevant space” (film director Katherine Bigelow talking of her movie work environment); the “spaces created by imperial rule” (Edinburgh University Press on British rule in Aden); “to create a space for alternative thinking and writing” (Denis MacShane on Polish leader Tadeusz Mazowiecki’s cooperation with communist rule); “a functioning commercial space”, “bar-restaurant space”, “non-commercial space”, “public house space”, “two-storey space” and lots of other “spaces” (an English-language Lebanese paper reviewing a cafe in a 19th century Beirut building); “air exhibition space”, “performance space”, and “well-curated space” (all from a Vancouver art gallery brochure); “a reclaiming of space” (an FT reviewer on women in Paris); “a space for different arguments” (an Irish Times feature on a Northern Ireland human rights festival); “to retain a space” (Cambridge historian Hugh Drocon on Nietzsche); and “a radical step change in our development of leaders who can shape and articulate a compelling vision and who are skilled and robust enough to create spaces of safe uncertainty [sic] in which the Kingdom grows” (the Church of England on training bishops).