Offbeat Humor

pic.twitter.com/XbSDPeMA5E

— Orwell & Goode (@OrwellNGoode) February 20, 2026

 

Data Talks

And here are the sex-segregated data on numbers of suicides in the United States from 1970 to 2022. pic.twitter.com/2r3EfzL5z1

— James L. Nuzzo, PhD (@JamesLNuzzo) February 21, 2026

 

At Breakfast, 1914 by Zinaida Serebriakova

At Breakfast, 1914 by Zinaida Serebriakova (Russia, 1884-1967)

Click to enlarge. 

History

For a brief period, all these realms were ruled by the Jagiellonian dynasty.

From 1516-26, Louis II ruled Hungary and Bohemia while his uncle ruled Poland-Lithuania.

Imagine an alternate European history where Jagiellonians forge a massive Eastern European Catholic empire. pic.twitter.com/1MEmET8AJE

— Aristocratic Fury (@LandsknechtPike) February 20, 2026

 

An Insight

One of my profs was just telling me this about 20th c Cambridge texts. It’s amazing what people were learning in school as recently as like 50 years ago https://t.co/sLpM6uUcW8

— Thōmās (@o_Thoma) February 20, 2026

 

I see wonderful things

Just a reminder that thousands of Amish from Pennsylvania spent an ENTIRE YEAR rebuilding Western North Carolina FOR FREE after Hurricane Helene...

...and not a single mainstream media outlet covered it

Their last tiny home was delivered to David Hostetter, a Vietnam veteran. pic.twitter.com/0qbmTB75fw

— Matt Van Swol (@mattvanswol) February 20, 2026

 

Offbeat Humor

Possibly the greatest single male athletic performance of all timepic.twitter.com/Lr64l9oStx

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) February 20, 2026

 

Data Talks

For 5 years we were told America was “millions of homes short.”

Here were the estimates:

• NAR: 5.5M (as high as 6.8M)
• Freddie Mac: 3.8M
• Zillow: 4.5M
• NLHC (rentals): 7.1M

Consensus? 5–7 million homes short.

Now JP Morgan: ~1.2M
That’s nearly an 80% revision.

Was it…

— Jon Brooks (@jonbrooks) February 20, 2026

 

Evidence? I am weary of evidence. Only rouse a man and make him feel the truth of his religion.

From Aids to Reflection and the Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.  

And what has been the consequence? An increasing unwillingness to contemplate the Supreme Being in his personal attributes: and thence a distaste to all the peculiar doctrines of the Christian Faith, the Trinity, the Incarnation of the Son of God, and Redemption. The young and ardent, ever too apt to mistake the inward triumph in the detection of error for a positive love of truth, are among the first and most frequent victims to this epidemic fastidium. Alas! even the sincerest seekers after light are not safe from the contagion. Some have I known, constitutionally religious—I speak feelingly; for I {271}speak of that which for a brief period was my own state—who under this unhealthful influence have been so estranged from the heavenly Father, the Living God, as even to shrink from the personal pronouns as applied to the Deity. But many do I know, and yearly meet with, in whom a false and sickly taste co-operates with the prevailing fashion: many, who find the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, far too real, too substantial; who feel it more in harmony with their indefinite sensations

To worship Nature in the hill and valley,

Not knowing what they love:—

and (to use the language, but not the sense or purpose of the great poet of our age) would fain substitute for the Jehovah of their Bible

A sense sublime

Of something far more deeply interfused,

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,

And the round ocean and the living air;

A motion and a spirit, that impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought,

And rolls through all things!

Wordsworth.

And this from having been educated to understand the Divine Omnipresence in any sense rather than the alone safe and legitimate one, the presence of all things to God!

Be it, however, that the number of such men is comparatively small! And be it (as in fact it often is) but a brief stage, a transitional state, in the process of intellectual Growth! Yet among a numerous and increasing class of the higher and middle ranks, there is an inward withdrawing from the Life and Personal Being of God, a turning of the thoughts exclusively to the so-called physical attributes, to the Omnipresence in the counterfeit form of ubiquity, to the Immensity, the Infinity, the Immutability;—the attributes of space with a notion of Power as their substratum, a Fate, in short, not a Moral Creator and Governor! Let intelligence be imagined, and wherein does the conception of God differ essentially from that of Gravitation (conceived as the cause of Gravity) in the understanding of those, who represent the Deity not only as a necessary but as a necessitated Being; those, for whom justice is but a scheme {272}of general laws; and holiness, and the divine hatred of sin, yea and sin itself, are words without meaning or accommodations to a rude and barbarous race? Hence, I more than fear, the prevailing taste for books of Natural Theology, Physico-Theology, Demonstrations of God from Nature, Evidences of Christianity, and the like. Evidences of Christianity! I am weary of the word. Make a man feel the want of it; rouse him, if you can, to the self-knowledge of his need only the express declaration of Christ himself: No man cometh to me, unless the Father leadeth him. Whatever more is desirable—I speak now with reference to Christians generally, and not to professed students of theology—may, in my judgment, be far more safely and profitably taught, without controversy or the supposition of infidel antagonists, in the form of Ecclesiastical history.

I often see the concluding thought paraphrased as:

Evidence? I am weary of evidence. Only rouse a man and make him feel the truth of his religion.

Palm Sunday messaging

I was just reading Deuteronomy 2:32-36 yesterday.  

32 Then Sihon came out against us, he and all his people, to fight at Jahaz.

33 And the Lord our God delivered him before us; and we smote him, and his sons, and all his people.

34 And we took all his cities at that time, and utterly destroyed the men, and the women, and the little ones, of every city, we left none to remain:

35 Only the cattle we took for a prey unto ourselves, and the spoil of the cities which we took.

36 From Aroer, which is by the brink of the river of Arnon, and from the city that is by the river, even unto Gilead, there was not one city too strong for us: the Lord our God delivered all unto us.

When I am waiting for the service to commence, I will often flip randomly to a passage to consider in addition to whatever the day's readings are.  Deuteronomy 2:32-36 wasn't particularly consonant with the spirit of Palm Sunday and the Lord's Passion but knowing the whole is always more challenging than dealing in the parts.  

Unbeknownst to me, the Pope was simultaneously making a Palm Sunday, Lord's Passion statement.  

Pope Leo XIV on Palm Sunday, forcefully denounces those who use God to justify war: “Brothers and sisters, this is our God, Jesus, King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war. He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them saying… pic.twitter.com/2x6VIGbkOM

— Catholic Sat (@CatholicSat) March 29, 2026

Of course this is in part just the eternal tension between the Old Testament of judgment, war and tragedy and the New Testament of forgiveness, peace and hope.  But it was a striking contrast between what I was reading while waiting for the service to begin and what the Pope was opining.  

And of course, Babylon Bee goes to town.

Pope Leo Explains God Does Not Listen To People Who Wage War So Long As You Don’t Count Moses, David, Joshua, Elijah, Saul, Gideon, Samson, Or Anyone Else In Bible https://t.co/8Hu7kJv7hc pic.twitter.com/q2jBwHjSST

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) March 29, 2026