suspending

I ended all YT subscriptions to Catholics. I promoted many on this website, including the Latin Mass orders, not expecting something in return, but after much time has passed, one would expect some subscriptions or comments. The Catholic and Orthodox Churches are inert. This website suspends them. I'm still available for tutoring English, all levels but not AP, which is nonsense (and I don't teach how to read), plus math through trig, my reeducation having begun in 2020. Thank you to the 40 or so subscribers unrelated to me. Check out the Reading List's "The Outsider". When you become an insider, you're doomed. Triple feature.

• Author Douglas Baber, born Belfast 1918, was from Epsom, England, and a Royal Air Force pilot during WW II. He died in 1963.
• Father Matthews was played by Liam Gaffney. Banker Closterman was played by Robert Forbes Felton, which is an anglicized Jewish name, Velten, or Felten from Germany, or Valentim, the English version being Valentine, from the Latin, Sanctus Valentinus.
• The film gained attention because Christopher Craig watched it, and later the same day he killed a cop during a burglary.

Crossed fingers
Where did fingers crossed originate? Early Catholics persecuted and martyred by Romans flashed crossed fingers, the canonical digits, forefinger and middle finger, often with another person's fingers forming an Ichthys, or fish symbol, to secretly identify each other. They began crossing their fingers to invoke the power of the cross for protection and blessings against evil or misfortune.

The practice flourished in England in the 16th century when persecutions began against recusants, including Shakespeare, according to the Oxford Reference. Over time, the meaning and significance were secularized, notes the Grammarist. (Gemini assist)

Merchant of Venice
As the dog Jew did utter in the streets, "My daughter! O my ducats! O my daughter! Fled with a Christian! O my Christian ducats! Justice! the law!"

JStor, ithaca.org, is dominated by women and Jews.

Greenland
We will get Greenland, eventually. Why? Rare earth minerals and oil. Your cell phone and laptop would not work without rare earth minerals from China, and we tried to buy Greenland once before: 1947, actually since 1867. The country is losing people, and if they became Americans, the spreadsheet, not the ice sheet, would make them the richest people on Earth. We bought Alaska and the Philippines and maneuvered our way into Hawaii, American Samoa, and Guam. Greenland is physically part of North America, not Europe, and rests on the North American Tectonic Plate.

outsider

What's the biggest thing in the solar system?
Jupiter with its magnetic field

​1/22/2026
"Don't date a microbe." -Loeb

the Ides of March

Shakespeare Julius Caesar
A soothsayer says, "Beware the Ides of March." On that fateful day, Caesar was stabbed 23 times.


Ranieri of Pisa, rocket man with conical fingers
Benedictine hermit monk, c. 1115-1160
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Titled Blessed Ranieri Frees the Poor from a Prison in Florence, the Sassetta altarpiece, painted 1437-44, was once part of an elaborate altarpiece in the Church of San Francesco in Sansepolcro, Tuscany, and is now in the Louvre. It consisted of 60 images and was constructed over Ranieri Rasini's tomb; only about half of the images survived, scattered in museums and private collections.

Jupiter
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courtesy of IFLScience