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Hungary has signalled it will drop its long-standing opposition to Ukraine’s bid for EU membership, allowing it and Moldova to begin formal negotiations to join the bloc in the coming days, four diplomats told POLITICO.

For the first day of Pride Month, a very short and very moving tribute to Imam Muhsin Hendricks, a courageous and humble advocate for all those oppressed and outcast, and the author of the first LGBTQ+ affirming Islamic theological arguments:

Real hot take here, but it stand by it: Turkish tea is absolutely superior; Turkish coffee is fine

I think it’s helpful to realize that worldviews- political, ideological, religious, etc- are primarily used by people to imbue events in the world with meaning, rather than explain why they happen. People can easily tolerate a lack of understanding, but no one can tolerate a lack of meaning.

If you see this post a tree

Post a meme made by you

Pope:”Reading nourishes the mind, helps cultivate a conscious and well-formed critical sense, guards against fundamentalisms and ideological shortcuts.” Reading is “an antidote to closed-mindedness which manifests in rigid attitudes and reductive views of reality.” www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news...

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Very excited to get this in the mail yesterday

4th Eye Blind

“A recently published study in The Lancet, the British medical journal, forecast that at present rates the defunding will cost 9.4 million lives by 2030, including 2.5 million children under the age of 5.”

St. Jacob of Serugh (Suruç in modern Turkey; 451-521) on the love of God

Reflections on a major figure of Islamic history whose traces I've been encountering for most of my scholarly career but who always seems to evade any firm academic grasp- a good thing really in my estimation:

U.S. intel also indicates that Iran retains about 75% of its pre-war inventories of mobile launchers & about 70% of its pre-war stockpiles of missiles, per a U.S. official. The regime has also been able to recover underground storage facilities & repair damaged missiles

Spring in Vienna. -- My favourite tulip in the Liechtensteinpark. #photography #Vienna #photographyOnBlueSky #Austria

What’s happening in Texas is indeed very concerning. It is tho reminiscent (and likely derived from) the organized Islamophobic activism that followed the “Ground Zero Mosque” controversy in 2010 and the included proposed bills in TN that would have banned Muslim ritual practice entirely.

“The dismantling of USAID, according to models from Boston University epidemiologist Brooke Nichols, “has already caused the deaths of six hundred thousand people, two-thirds of them children,” Gawande wrote.” hsph.harvard.edu/news/usaid-s...

Despite pressure, Gov. Henry McMaster won’t call special session to redraw SC’s congressional map www.postandcourier.com/politics/mcm...

Really interesting thread on South Carolina politics from a genuine expert:

The original Star Wars has to be the “best” if only bc its main themes are the precondition for the success of any following work However, just in terms is sheer quality, absolutely nothing is in even the same universe as Andor- except Rogue One

Pope Leo reading the book 'Free Under Grace', which brings together speeches, homilies, letters, and messages from his early ministry as Robert Prevost. Currently available in Italian, the book will be released in several languages in the coming months.

This article is so British it jumped through my phone and drew lines around my living room so that it could be divided into several new nation states

Generational tweet that might even spawn a school of architecture.

Maybe if Moldova joins the EU, it will also set an example of good practices in press freedom for its neighboring EU member states. 🫣 2026 RSF Index: press freedom at a 25-year low rsf.org/en/index

(RNS) — Thousands of people are missing in South Sudan. Church leaders are shining a light on this scourge on the second anniversary of a Catholic priest’s disappearance.

A very good exchange with Péter Magyar in Brussels today. We discussed the steps necessary to unlock EU funds earmarked for Hungary, that are frozen due to corruption and rule of law concerns.

About 10% of the Continental Army was free nonwhite people (mostly Black and American Indian). One of the first 5 people killed in the Revolution was a biracial person (Crispus Attucks). See here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_P...

This strikes at the very heart of what above all makes America a great nation. That we would combine the ancient virtue of hospitality with the modern cause of freedom. This was our mission! To be “an asylum for mankind” (Paine, Common Sense). And we’ve abandoned it.

TIL there's a small town in Wisconsin named after St. Gregory of Nazianzus

The peace of God, which passeth all understanding

i feel like society moved on from these too quickly

"Three young Barn Owls looking out of the quatrefoil of a church in North Norfolk."

Measles Surge in South Carolina Ends After Sickening Nearly 1,000 It was the largest outbreak in recent U.S. history. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/26/w...

April 24th is remembrance day for the Ottoman Empire’s WWI genocide of Armenians and Assyrians—which, for decades, was routinely denied by academic historians. My new article in Review of Middle East Studies documents and explains one of the legacies of that denial www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Old truth indeed- from the Desert Fathers: "A brother confessed to Abba Sisoes: 'I fell, Father. What do I do now?' 'Get up,' the holy elder told him." (1/2)

St George is not always the one with the dragon

Hasan Piker is the left Millennial version of Rush Limbaugh.

Liberals need to dump this guy. He’s just a liberal version of toxic masculinity, always has been.

AI understands in exactly the same way a camera sees.

Marc’s work has that rare combination of academic research expertise and up to the minute commentary- highly recommend

It’s interesting how obsessive focus on defeating one specific moral enemy eventually results in abandoning morality altogether

I lived in Tucson [Desert Portland] for awhile and have lived close to Asheville [Mountain Portland] for over a decade. Can confirm

+1 for Russia. However, I think that Radev, unlike Orbán, will have limits on how much he’ll support Russia’s narrative within the EU. EU money are more important.

The indeterminacy of the eschaton is meant to keep you focused on changing yourself today, right now- because no one knows when the hour will arrive. This is why scriptures like the Qur’an and the Bible command the reader to prepare themselves for the Day of Judgment, not try and bring it about.

Authoritarian techno-futurists: “we must retvrn to Western Civilization!!!” Liberals, opening a copy of the Catholic Catechism: “ok”

“In 2025, 48% of Americans ages 18-29 could not name a single concentration or death camp… Another 53% of surveyed Americans said that they had encountered Holocaust ‘denial or distortion while on social media.’”

The mightiest societies were deeply pluralistic. Rome was not nationalist. The society that produced the algorithm- the Muslim ‘Abbasid Caliphate- was half non-Muslim. The America that destroyed Hitler was a nation of immigrants. “Inclusion into what?”- into civilization dude! That’s how it works!