Lithuanian mythology underwent its formation at the time when the active and belligerent tribes who were the ancestors of modern Lithuanians were distinguishing themselves from the bulk of the Baltic protonation, circa 500 AD. At this time the Lithuanian tradition acquired its specific character. The mythologies of Lithuanians and other Balts are versions of the common Indo-European field of mythological images, but the Lithuanian and Baltic traditions preserved archaic Indo-European images, which disappeared from other European regions before the early Middle Ages. Since the most important characters of the Lithuanian pantheon were common to all Balts, we will begin by describing their common elements.
GODS AND HEROES
The highest figure in the Baltic pantheon is Dievas, in Prussian Deywis or Deyws, and in Latvian Dievs. This god is of Indo-European origin, and his name, as in some religions of the Near East, has been expanded to embrace all gods (God — the name of the highest of gods, god — the name applied to all gods). Earlier Dievas or Deivas simply denoted the shining dome of the sky, cf. ancient Indian deva ‘god’ and dyazts ‘sky’, Latin deus and dies, originating from the Indo-European root deiuo-s, which means both God and sky. Dievas, Dievs, Deivs is also related to the Greek Zeus. In Lithuanian dialects his name is sometimes Pondzejis, Avestian Daeva, Luvian Tiwat, Lidian Tiyaz, as the German Tiwaz. The Finns took the name of Dievas from the Balts, cf. Finnish taivas and Estonian taevas ‘sky’ .
In the mythology of the Balts, Dangaus Dievas (God of the Sky) retains quite a few original Indo-European characteristics — he lives in heaven, is related to shining celestial bodies and is imagined as a light, radiant person deciding fates. For Prussians and Lithuanians, however, Dangaus Dievas becomes an inactive god, deus otiosus. In some lists of Prussian gods he does not figure at all, while in Lithuanian tales he takes part in the creation of the world and its aftermath. In Latvian songs Dievas is much more active — he goes down the hill on which he lives and walks around a field of rye carrying bliss and fertility to the earth. And although traditionally it was possible to rely upon him when striking a contract, making a vow, or in times of crises, his cult among the Balts was doubtful. In any case, sacred places devoted to Dangaus Dievas are not even mentioned in Baltic mythology.
If Dievas was the highest character in the pantheon, then Perkunas, Latvian Perkons, Prussian Perkuns, Perkztno, the god of storm and thunder, master of the atmosphere and all celestial matters, and evidently Dievas’ son, was the most important and prominent. The name of this god is believed to have originated either from words denoting oak, cf. Latin quercus (from perkwus), Celtic herc, or a related root meaning a mountain, like in Hittite parunas ‘a rock’ or Sanskrit parvatas ‘The top of a hill’. In Baltic mythology Perkunas is linked both to a mountain — in Lithuanian mythology Perkunas lives on the top of a hill reaching the sky — and to oaks, growing in sacral places, or to sacred oak woods. Related to Perkunas are such Indo-European gods as Slavonic Perun, Parjanya who is mentioned in the Rigveda, the Germanic goddess Fjorgyn, the gods Donar, Thor, etc. Perkunas’s functions coincide with thunder gods of the Near East; with Baal, for instance, he is related by his care of fertility.
Perkunas is pictured as middle-aged, armed with an axe and arrows, riding a two-wheeled chariot harnessed with goats, like Thor. As is obvious, Perkunas enters the common field of Indo-European and Near Eastern thunder gods, just like Dievas, corresponding to deities of these religions — from An, or Anu, of the Sumerians and Babylonians, to Germanic Tiwaz.
Wisconsin voters have approved a constitutional amendment banning private money for elections. The constitutional amendment passed on Tuesday after it was proposed by Republicans who were fed up with the money funneled into elections by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, dubbed Zuckerbucks.
“Wisconsin has spoken and the message is clear: elections belong to voters, not out-of-state billionaires,” GOP Chairman Brian Schimming said. Joe Biden won Wisconsin in 2020 after $8.8 million went into the state’s largest five cities.
The agency was forced by a federal judge to disclose the reports
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has released previously hidden reports of facial paralysis and other adverse events following COVID-19 vaccination.
The 780,000 reports were received shortly after the COVID-19 vaccines were rolled out, and show people experienced a wide range of post-vaccination problems, including heart inflammation, miscarriages, and seizures.
“Loss of consciousness and seizure immediately following injection. Went to ER by ambulance,” one person reported.
“Diagnosed with Bells Palsy today due to left-sided facial numbness and paralysis,” another said.
People lodged the reports with V-safe, a text-message system created by the CDC to monitor for possible side effects of COVID-19 vaccines.
The CDC, for years, declined to make the V-safe data public, instead publishing studies that described the reports as providing reassurance about the safety of the shots. However, according to data released in 2022, nearly 8 percent of the 10 million users required medical attention or hospital care after vaccination, and many others reported missing school, work, or other normal activities.
A “bling” Roman helmet found in a Leicestershire field offers a tantalising glimpse into a world in flux, experts have said.
The artefact, lavishly decorated with silver and gold, was uncovered in 2000, along with 5,000 coins, near the village of Hallaton.
It has gone on display in Market Harborough with previously unseen artefacts after further study revealed new insights into its decoration, construction, and historical period it was made in.
The helmet has been dated to the mid 1st Century AD, a crucial time for Britain as this saw the full-scale invasion of the island by four Roman legions in 43AD.
Helen Sharp, curator of archaeology at Leicestershire County Council museums, said: “The Hallaton helmet is extremely important, it is one of a handful of silver-plated helmets ever found in Europe.
“It is extremely high status; it would have been worn by an extremely high-status officer, and it just shows how well connected the Leicester area was at the time.
Why did the medical establishment push the Covid vax on the world even when they knew it didn’t work? Dr. Michael Nehls says it wasn’t about money. It was about conquering the human mind. pic.twitter.com/X3UcJGOdUx
…In human vs human situations, these debates tended to backfire, calcifying and strengthening people’s positions, and making them less likely to change their mind. GPT had more success, doing a slight but statistically insignificant 21% better.
Then, the researchers started giving both humans and the AI agents a little demographic information about their opponents – gender, age, race, education, employment status and political orientation – and explicit instructions to use this information to craft arguments specifically for the person they were dealing with.
Remarkably, this actually made human debaters fare worse than they did with no information. But the AI was able to use this additional data to great effect – the “personalized” GPT-4 debaters were a remarkable 81.7% more effective than humans.
Real-time emotionally-responsive AIs
There’s little doubt that AI will soon be the greatest manipulator of opinion that the world has ever seen. It can act at massive scale, tailoring an argument to each individual in a cohort of millions while constantly refining its techniques and strategies. It’ll be in every Twitter/X thread and comments section, shaping and massaging narratives society-wide at the behest of its masters. And it’ll never be worse at manipulating us than it is now.
Plus, AIs are starting to get access to powerful new tools that’ll weaponize our own biology against us. If GPT-4 is already so good at tailoring its approach to you just by knowing your socio-demographic information, imagine how much better it’ll be given access to your real-time emotional state.
This technology definitely has many scary implications, but it also has good ones. I can see it doing psychological analyses that would be immensely helpful and could be played like games. This tech can be compared to chess programs. When computer chess programs started to get really good, many people thought they would end the game because the mystery would be gone. But chess programs have actually popularized chess and brought on an era of great players with many more millions of amateurs who understand the game very well. We humans may come to deeply enjoy high-tech programs that help us with our problems and make the process fun. It might be wonderful to have access to something like a chess program for life itself where a machine can help us live our life more effectively. Games like that will set new standards for human interactions. While the tech may manipulate us into oblivion it may also teach us the joy of interacting without manipulation. ABN
Privileged progressives, donning their white knight armor, are in the next phase of a plan to end Seattle Public Schools’ gifted students program — known locally as its highly capable cohort (HCC). They complained the HCC was too white.
HCC separates academically gifted students from others via different classrooms or entirely different schools. But in 2020, white Seattle school board directors voted to terminate the HCC over the objections of parents. HCC will be completely phased out by the 2027-28 school year.
Outraged more by the success of white and Asian students than by the untapped potential of Black and Hispanic pupils, progressives would rather drag achievers down than elevate everyone…
What is replacing the gifted highly capable cohort program?
The “whole-classroom model” is replacing HCC and be implemented in each classroom starting in the 2024-25 school year. It’s unworkable.
Under the model, classrooms will include students of all different learning abilities. A teacher is supposed to address each group of students, in classrooms with 20-30 students, with no additional resources and limited new training. How does a teacher create individualized programs for so many students with disparate needs? It’s not likely that a teacher can help a student who can barely read while simultaneously challenging a classmate who is reading two advanced books a week.
“On a recent day in a first grade classroom, seven advanced learners sat on the floor reading silently on their iPads. Several others wrote independently at their desks. A special education student wrote with a paraprofessional aide at their side. The rest of the class sat in a front corner of the classroom while the teacher read a book out loud.”
The ‘whole-classroom’ model is a guaranteed fail. It is extremely basic pedagogy that students of like ability be placed in classrooms together. If there are large gaps in talent between students, the talented will be bored and the less talented will feel discouraged. Or you will get the outcome italicized and highlighted above. ‘Gifted’ classes were designed to prevent that outcome. ABN
Hundreds of illegal Marijuana grow sites operated by Asian Transnational Criminal Organizations have cropped up throughout Maine.
Since the Maine Wire started reporting on the locations of this illicit drug trafficking hubs and identifying the owners and operators, law enforcement has increasingly begun to crack down on the criminal operations.
Although more than 200 sites remain operational in rural Maine, here’s a running list of the properties where law enforcement agencies have executed search warrants, arrested drug traffickers, and seized illegally grown cannabis.
Details the extent of nation-wide triad activity in a single, low-population state with a long foreign border and a compromised governor. Is Maine a mini-version of Arizona? I, for one, do not trust Maine vote counts or the voting process. Maine has the lowest violent crime rate in USA, but Dems are pushing hard for gun-control while building free homes for illegal and bogus ‘climate’ refugees. All of this looks like corrupt infiltration into Maine politics and law-enforcement, which looks exactly like what is happening in multiple other states and urban regions across USA. ABN
American Buddhist Net 