Another European city has taken up the idea of utilizing the space over its cemeteries for generating solar power, a project it calls Requiem in Power, or RIP. At the heart of Valencia, three cemeteries at Grau, Campanar, and Benimàmet will be outfitted with 7,000 panels to create the largest urban solar farm in Spain. […] The post Three Valencia Cemeteries to Play Host to Largest Urban Solar Farm in Spain appeared first on Good News Network.

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Books Norse mythology Five Legendary Warriors of Northern Myth, Epic, and Saga When it comes to epic feats on the battlefield, these warriors, valkyries, and shield-maidens were always ready to rumble… By Rowdy Geirsson | Published on June 13, 2024 Illustration by Emil Doepler (c. 1905) Comment 0 Share New Share Illustration by Emil Doepler (c. 1905) The warriors of northern myth, epic, and saga have always been famed for their fighting prowess; the glory of their victories was praised loud and proud under the rafters of the mead halls where they were transformed into legend long ago. Whether divine or mortal, the tales of these fighters’ fierce engagements in hand-to-hand combat and adventurous, monster-slaying exploits have entertained generations of listeners, readers, and viewers over the course of centuries as technology has evolved from olden times to the present day While many exciting, original characters inspired by the Viking Age and its culture continue to appear on page and screen, the warriors who spring from the misty depths of actual lore somehow remain the most vital across all forms of art and entertainment. These figures often form an integral component of the worldbuilding of many modern-day fiction stories, whether full-blown fantasy or historical fiction set in a Viking or Viking-esque milieu. In some cases, these figures become prominent characters of entirely new plot-lines. In other cases, their exploits form the core of modern retellings of the ancient stories themselves. While the overall traits and historicity of these warriors may vary, one thing remains certain: their fierce reputations have survived for over a millennium for good reason. Thor “Thor’s Fight With the Giants” by Mårten Eskil Winge (1872) No discussion about legendary northern fighters should begin with anyone other than Thor. The renowned thunder god of Norse mythology, Thor was widely worshiped in the Viking Age and even before that (and figures prominently in the modern-day revival faith known as Ásatrú) and has given his name to the day of the week we call Thursday. Boisterous and quick-tempered, Thor tended to be more popular than his grim, one-eyed father, Odin, among the general population of the Viking Age, as various place-names and recovered artifacts found throughout the Nordic countries suggest (such as the famous Icelandic statuette of Thor holding his hammer that was discovered in Eyjafjörður, dated to the year 1000). But more numerous than the direct depictions of the god himself are the artifacts that have been found in archaeological digs that specifically represent Mjölnir, his famous hammer and primary weapon. Thor remains renowned for his strength and excellent fighting abilities, and the ancient tales of his slaying of hostile giants have survived in the Icelandic Eddas, our foremost sources of Norse mythology. The old tales also tell of his deadly rivalry with Jörmungandr, the Midgard (or Middle-Earth, if you will) Serpent who Thor once lured up from the bottom of the sea during a disastrous fishing trip. The two are fated to kill each other when the world ends at Ragnarök. Thor often features in the background of historic fiction and Norse-inspired fantasy stories. Even if he does not play a role himself, characters often reference his humorous antics or call upon him for help and strength in novels such as Giles Kristian’s Raven series. Or they might encounter his presence in dreams or feel the effects of his off-stage actions, as in Gregory Amato’s Burden to Bear and Bjørn Larssen’s Children. As retellings of the myths themselves, Neil Gaiman’s Norse Mythology and Joanne M. Harris’ The Gospel of Loki naturally feature Thor as a prominent character. The stories of his exploits have also found their way into music, particularly in the subgenre of viking metal as exemplified by the band Amon Amarth, and in video games such as God of War: Ragnarök. But, of course, the most well-known version of Thor at this point in time is his incarnation as a superhero in the Marvel Universe. Created as a comic character by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in the early 1960s, this version of Thor generally stays true to his basic qualities as depicted in the old sources—in the sense that he’s a great fighter, strong, short-tempered, loves to drink, and doesn’t always do a lot of thinking—while completely reinventing the world that he inhabits. His appearance also undergoes a radical change; the Thor of the Eddas is red-haired and bushy-bearded. Marvel’s version seems to borrow the appearance depicted in Mårten Eskil Winge’s famous 1872 painting, Thor’s Fight With the Giants. At any rate, the blond, body-builder version of Thor is now most common… and even makes makes a very memorable appearance of sorts in the classic 1987 comedy film, Adventures in Babysitting. Beowulf Illustration by Johannes Gehrts (1888) Perhaps the most famous human fighting machine in all the English language, Beowulf is, of course, Swedish. Or more accurately, he is a Geat (a member of a Germanic tribe that ruled over a territory that was eventually absorbed into Sweden). Beowulf’s story takes place prior to the Viking Age and survives in an Old English manuscript dating to around the year 1000 C.E. Many students are required to read some version of his tale in secondary school, a fact that likely diminishes its potential for garnering new interest among young people. At any rate, it’s a classic, albeit somewhat simple, story: Beowulf kills monsters, then dies himself. But even though he dies in the end, we are reminded again and again just how good he is at fighting and killing monsters (he is also very good at leading men in war and swimming long distances). Beowulf also has a likely twin in the figure of Bodvar Bjarki, who appears in the Icelandic Hrolf Kraki’s Saga and the Danish History of the Danes (usually referred to simply as Gesta Danorum). Scholars such as Jesse L. Byock suspect that Bodvar and Beowulf probably stem from the same ancient legend. The two share similar traits and names, which relate to “bear” (the animal). Additionally, Bodvar, like Beowulf, kills a monster that terrorizes a mead-hall. But Bodvar, unlike Beowulf, also possesses the supernatural ability to send his spirit out as a ferocious bear in battle. Additionally, unlike Beowulf, who is a leader in his own right, Bodvar acts instead as a member of the retinue of warriors that serves King Hrolf Kraki. That whole tale is retold in modern prose by the revered sci-fi and fantasy author Poul Anderson in a novel that shares the same name as the Icelandic saga. Beowulf (the poem) has been a perennial favorite for generations of translators, with examples ranging from J.R.R. Tolkien (published in 2014 but composed in the 1920s) to the Irish poet and Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney (2001), to Maria Dahvana Headley (2020) to Tom Shippey (2024), but the story also finds its way into a wide variety of retellings, each with its own unique perspective. Parke Godwin’s The Tower of Beowulf (1995) provides a fun, fairly straight-forward novelization, while Maria Dahvana Headley’s The Mere Wife (2018) offers a modern-day, feminist twist on the old tale. Michael Crichton’s Eaters of the Dead (1976), which was the basis for the 1999 film The 13th Warrior, is a retelling that moves the tale into the Viking Age and eliminates the full-blown fantasy elements, positing the monsters as a left-over enclave of Neanderthals instead. There has been no shortage of Beowulf-related screen adaptations, many of which have been very poorly produced, but two films beyond The 13th Warrior that have retold the Beowulf legend better than most are Beowulf and Grendel (2005), which was filmed in Iceland and starred Gerard Butler and Stellan Skarsgård, and Beowulf (2007), the performance-capture animated film based on a script co-written by Neil Gaiman. And just recently, the Jim Henson Company announced a new live-action film to start production later this year based on Grendel, the 1971 novel by John Gardner that retells the old story from the perspective of its most notorious monster. Sigurd & Brynhild Engraving by R. Bong (1892) after original art by Otto Donner von Richter Sigurd and Brynhild are two of the most renowned figures in all of Norse lore. But unlike the other figures on this list, Sigurd and Brynhild do not call Scandinavia home (or Asgard either, for that matter, as is the case for Thor), but rather the Germanic-speaking regions of mainland Europe long before the advent of the Vikings. Their story is remembered in many old sources, with the German Nibelungenlied and the Icelandic The Saga of the Volsungs and The Poetic Edda being the foremost. Sigurd (also known as Siegfried) stems from the clan of the Volsungs—a line of top-notch warriors enduring a serious string of bad luck despite (or perhaps because of) being favored by Odin himself. Like Beowulf, Sigurd is famed for slaying a dragon. Brynhild (also known as Brunhild), on the other hand, is a valkyrie—one of Odin’s famed “choosers of the slain.” The implication is that she is also fearless and adept at the use of weapons, but we know less about her battle history. In fact, the part of the tale that focuses on Sigurd and Brynhild (it’s a multi-generational story) deals mostly with their status as star-crossed lovers, and a very important ring plays an extremely critical role in the whole tragic sequence of events. This is the story that served as the primary influence for Richard Wagner’s great epic, Der Ring des Nibelungen, in the late 19th century. The ring motif also influenced J.R.R. Tolkien’s famous body of work about Middle-earth (and he retold part of the tale itself in The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, released for the first time in 2009; Gudrún was other woman involved in the disastrous love triangle). William Morris also crafted his own version of the story in 1876 and numerous examples of artwork from the 19th and early 20th centuries depict the characters, including illustrations by Arthur Rackham (who focused on Wagner’s version) and Jenny Nyström (who is best-known for creating the iconic look of Christmas gnomes as we know them today). But the story was clearly very well known long, long before any of those creators began to borrow from it. Artistic depictions of the legend have been found on a handful of runestones in Sweden and stone crosses in the United Kingdom, and the scene of Sigurd’s dragon-slaying appears in ornate, carved wooden relief at the medieval stave church in Hylestad, Norway. More recently, the legend has been retold in a handful of fantasy novels. Stephan Grundy’s Rhinegold and Diana L. Paxon’s Wodan’s Children trilogy both tackled the subject in the 1990s. And with the recent rise of interest in the “whole northern thing,” it’s perhaps not too surprising that two new retellings have just been released in the past year: Kate Heartfield’s The Valkyrie and Tim Hodkinson’s Sword of the War God. Ragnar Lodbrok & Lagertha Illustration by Morris Meredith Williams (1913) Ragnar Lodbrok has experienced a major resurgence in popularity recently thanks to the History Channel’s Vikings, which is basically a fantasy show masquerading as historic fiction (the rampant and egregious historical inaccuracies could easily form the basis of an entire book of its own; they go far beyond the normal limits of creative license for historic fiction). Nonetheless, Ragnar receives a good deal of attention in a variety of the old sources, where he is generally identified as the legendary son of the also legendary King Sigurd Ring and father to the not-so-surprisingly named “sons of Ragnar” who include memorable individuals that should be familiar to fans of the television series, such as Björn Ironside, Ivar the Boneless, and Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye, among others (the sources are inconsistent). According to the Icelandic Saga of Ragnar Lodbrok and Tale of Ragnar’s Sons, Ragnar marries Aslaug (who he actually meets via the riddle-esque scene as depicted in the History Channel’s show, and who might also just be the daughter of Sigurd and Brynhild); Aslaug becomes mother to Ragnar’s famous sons mentioned above. But according to Gesta Danorum, he married the shield-maiden Lagertha, who we also know from the show, where she assumed a much more prominent role. But Gesta Danorum assures us that Lagertha conducted matchless feats of bravery in battle, even if we don’t really know what those were aside from one instance when she helps Ragnar regain his throne. Ragnar engages in more typical Viking behavior than the other warriors on this list—meaning he raided and explored—but he’s nonetheless a very impressive fighter, too. In fact, like Beowulf and Sigurd, he’s a serpent slayer. After divorcing Lagertha, Ragnar seeks out the maiden Thora’s hand in marriage. To succeed, he must slay the serpent (or serpents, again depending on the source) that guards her bower. When facing this monstrosity, he wore a special pair of shaggy breeches, which is what the “lodbrok” part of his name refers to. Ragnar lived a tumultuous life full of extensive military campaigns, which eventually led him to England where he died a true Viking warrior’s death—laughing at his enemies from the depths of the snake pit into which he had been thrown. While famous and legendary, Ragnar hasn’t received the same degree of attention in pop culture—at least prior to his on-screen rebirth as the star of Vikings, portrayed by actor Travis Fimmel—as some of the others on this list, and the same definitely also goes for Lagertha (portrayed by Katheryn Winnick). Nonetheless, Ragnar receives passing mention in Frans G. Bengtsson’s The Long Ships, the classic adventure novel from 1941, and made an appearance in the 1958 film The Vikings. He also features in the 1993 alternate history novel The Hammer and the Cross, coauthored by Harry Harrison and Tom Shippey, whose books include J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century (2000), Laughing Shall I Die: Lives and Deaths of the Great Vikings (2018), and the aforementioned translation of Beowulf. More recently, Einar Selvik, the mastermind behind the heavily Norse-influenced musical act Wardruna, released an album inspired directly by Ragnar Lodbrok’s notorious death scene: Snake Pit Poetry. Grettir Asmundson Illustration by Henry Justice Ford (1902) While less world-renowned than the others on this list, Grettir Asmundson is no less a fearsome fighter: he’s capable of defeating zombies with his bare hands (or “draugar” as they are known in the old sources; which is a term more literally related to the word “ghost,” but which act more akin to our modern concept of zombies). He’s an unruly child in his early years, but earns himself a reputation throughout Iceland and to a lesser extent Norway as a formidable warrior capable of killing berserkers. He’s also more of an anti-hero than many of the fearless fighters who serve to exemplify the ideal of the old warrior culture; after being cursed in its dying breath by Glam, one of the draugar that he kills, Grettir’s luck turns against him. He becomes plagued by a constant fear of the dark and a series of mishaps and misdeeds that eventually earn him a sentence of outlawry. His story is told in Grettir’s Saga (sometimes also called The Saga of Grettir the Strong), and while it hasn’t made quite the same degree of impact on pop culture or modern fantasy as the others described here have, there have been a few notable instances of it reaching a wider audience. In the mid-20th century, Icelandic artist Halldór Pétursson created a series of highly stylized black and white drawings of key scenes in the saga. More recently, Grettir’s Saga has been transposed to modern Sheffield, England and retold in the novel Nutcase (2017) by Tony Williams. And most recently, the scene in the 2022 film The Northman in which the main character, Amleth, defeats the mound-dweller borrows extensively from Grettir’s battle with Glam, including the decapitation and subsequent placement of the draugr’s severed head against its own buttocks. Clearly, draugar are not to be respected when they are defeated in battle. [end-mark] The post Five Legendary Warriors of Northern Myth, Epic, and Saga appeared first on Reactor.

The far-left smear factory the Southern Poverty Law Center reportedly terminated a quarter of its staff Wednesday, weakening and perhaps eliminating two of its departments amid a restructure that heavily hit its union members. The SPLC “gutted its staff by a quarter,” the organization’s union posted on X. (Yes, this nonprofit organization has its own labor union. If staff get tired of protesting Alliance Defending Freedom, they can protest management, instead.) The SPLC told more than 60 union members, including five union stewards and the union’s chair, that they would be losing their jobs. “We are devastated for our union and our colleagues,” the union posted. The SPLC confirmed the news to The Alabama Reflector, though it did not respond to a request for comment from The Daily Signal. “We announced internally the consolidation of certain programs and activities as well as the elimination of others, resulting in staff reductions,” the center said. The SPLC aims “streamline our activities and operations to strengthen our ability to advance a multiracial, inclusive democracy and ground our work in the perspectives and priorities of communities most affected by human rights violations.” Today, @splcenter – an organization with nearly a billion dollars in reserves, given an F rating by CharityWatch for “hoarding” donations – gutted its staff by a quarter.— SPLC Union (@SPLCUnion) June 12, 2024 The union, however, claimed that the move will effectively end various departments at the organization. A Restructuring? The SPLC is “functionally eliminating the Learning for Justice department,” the union noted. SPLC co-founder Morris Dees established an education program, then called “Teaching Tolerance,” in 1991. The program rebranded as “Learning for Justice” in 2021, apparently because “tolerance” wasn’t woke enough. The program has advocated for teaching kids as young as 2 years old about transgender identity, and it has heartily embraced Critical Race Theory, a lens by which teachers tell kids that whites are oppressors and blacks oppressed in a “systemically racist” America. The SPLC will also lay off all 16 staff in the Southern Immigrant Freedom Initiative, closing the office and ceasing to provide free legal representation to “detained immigrants across Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi,” the union claimed. The layoffs also involve dismantling “the full Immigrant Justice team,” according to the union. The union noted that the SPLC has “nearly a billion dollars in reserves” and received an “F” rating from nonprofit watchdog CharityWatch, in part for hoarding donations. CharityWatch warned that the SPLC may not use donors’ money for 7.3 years, because its reserves can keep the center running for that long. It remains unclear exactly why the SPLC decided to terminate so many staff. As of 2022, the center had an endowment of $731.9 million and accounts in the Cayman Islands. It seems it should be able to hold on to its employees. “An organization with this much money has no excuse,” Hannah Gais, an SPLC Union member who apparently did not lose her job, wrote on X. today, SPLC — my employer —laid off over 60 of our union members, essentially shuttering multiple departments. speaking in a personal capacity, i endorse each and every single word of this statement from our union. an organization with this much money has no excuse. https://t.co/pC8zQxSZYe— hannah gais (@hannahgais) June 12, 2024 What Is the SPLC? As I wrote in my book, “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” the SPLC began by providing free legal services to poor people in the South. In the 1980s, it shifted its focus to suing Ku Klux Klan groups into bankruptcy. By the 1980s, the Klan—evil though it still was—had become a paper tiger, and lawyers complained that suing Klan groups was like “shooting fish in a barrel.” Yet the lawyers said the SPLC kept doing it because it raked in donations. Eventually, the SPLC ran out of grand dragons to conquer, so it repurposed the journal it used to monitor the Klan—appropriately named Klanwatch—and started reporting on ever more mainstream organizations. By the 2010s, it started putting mainstream conservative and Christian organizations on a list of “hate groups” that eventually morphed into including a “hate map.” The list and the map have always included Klan chapters. In 2019, the SPLC fired its co-founder, Dees, in a racial discrimination and sexual harassment scandal. Amid that scandal, a former employee came forward, calling the SPLC’s “hate” accusations a “highly profitable scam.” Almost every year, the SPLC reports a higher number of “hate groups” than the year before. For the 2022 version of the “hate map”—released in 2023—it added “antigovernment extremist groups” to the map. Conservatives have long suspected that the “hate map” is a tool to silence the SPLC’s opponents. The SPLC advocates against enforcing immigration laws, and it brands immigration enforcement groups like the Federation for American Immigration Reform, the Center for Immigration Studies, and the Dustin Inman Society “anti-immigrant hate groups.” It also advocates for LGBTQ issues and it puts Christian nonprofits like Alliance Defending Freedom and the Family Research Council on the map as “anti-LGBTQ+ hate groups.” Last year, it added parental rights groups such as Moms for Liberty to the “hate map.” When the SPLC released its latest “hate map” report last week, it predictably claimed that hate and extremism were increasing. This version of the “hate map” included Gays Against Groomers, a group of gay people who oppose the sexualization of children, as an “anti-LGBTQ+ hate group.” Scandals The SPLC has faced numerous scandals in recent years, though that seems not to bother President Joe Biden and his administration. In 2012, a terrorist used the SPLC’s “hate map” to target the Family Research Council for a mass shooting. The building manager suffered a gunshot wound but prevented the terrorist from carrying out his plan. The SPLC condemned the attack but kept the council on the “hate map” ever since. In 2015, the SPLC removed neurosurgeon and presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson from its “extremist list” after putting him there largely because he opposed same-sex marriage. In 2018, the SPLC paid more than $3 million to settle a defamation lawsuit after it branded a Muslim reformer an “anti-Muslim extremist.” The charity rating platform GuideStar added SPLC “hate group” labels to its rating pages for nonprofits in 2017, only to remove them amid a backlash. Last year, a judge allowed a defamation lawsuit against the SPLC to proceed to discovery. Meanwhile, authorities arrested an SPLC attorney at an Atlanta Antifa riot involving Molotov cocktails. That lawyer faces domestic terrorism charges. After the FBI’s Richmond, Virginia, office drafted a memo citing the SPLC on “radical-traditional Catholic hate groups,” the FBI’s national office rushed to rescind the memo, saying it did not meet the FBI’s standards, an implicit attack on the SPLC’s credibility. In the wake of the Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel, the SPLC remained silent. The SPLC Union released a statement before the SPLC did, and the union expressed “solidarity with the Palestinian people,” condemning Israel for “the violent imperialist desecration of a people—the beginnings of a genocide.” On the same day, photos from a social media platform suggested that an SPLC lawyer helped organize an anti-Israel protest that took over a congressional office building. When the SPLC finally did release a statement about the Oct. 7 attacks, it falsely accused Israel of targeting Palestinian children in Gaza for airstrikes, only to stealth-edit the statement and delete the claim after The Daily Signal exposed it. Despite all this, the Biden administration has repeatedly worked with the SPLC, with a Justice Department division listening to an SPLC briefing on its “hate map.” SPLC President Margaret Huang bragged that the administration reached out to the SPLC for advice on combating the “domestic terrorism threat.” The post MELTDOWN: SPLC Terminates a Quarter of Staff, ‘Decimates’ 3 Departments, Union Claims appeared first on The Daily Signal.

ACLU Sues Biden Over Border Restrictions

The ship that witnessed the death of polar explorer Ernest Shackleton has been found in remarkable condition on the seafloor around 15 nautical miles from the coast of Canada.A team of international experts led by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society (RCGS) located the ship, called Quest, at a depth of 390 meters (1,280 feet) along the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador.Shackleton was aboard the ship when he died of a heart attack in January 1922. At the time, the ship was anchored at South Georgia, an island in the South Atlantic Ocean, during a journey toward Antarctica. The ship continued its work for several decades, but eventually sank in 1962 after getting damaged by ice. All the crew were saved and survived.“Finding Quest is one of the final chapters in the extraordinary story of Sir Ernest Shackleton,” John Geiger, expedition leader for the search and CEO of the RCGS, in a statement.“Shackleton was known for his courage and brilliance as a leader in crisis. The tragic irony is that his was the only death to take place on any of the ships under his direct command,” added Geiger.                The wreckage was located using historical documents and maps, which were cross-referenced with modern technology and live information on currents and weather conditions, as well as knowledge from local Indigenous people.“I can definitively confirm that we have found the wreck of the Quest. She is intact. Data from high resolution side scan sonar imagery corresponds exactly with the known dimensions and structural features of this special ship. It is also consistent with events at the time of the sinking,” explained David Mearns, a world-renowned shipwreck hunter and oceanographer who worked on the project. A photograph of Quest sinking in 1962.Image credit: Royal Canadian Geographical SocietyShackleton was a major player in the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, leading three British expeditions to the Antarctic. His most famous adventure was made in 1914 on the ship Endurance, the wreck of which was discovered in 2022 at a depth of 3,000 meters (almost 10,000 feet) in the Weddell Sea. In early 1915, the Endurance vessel became trapped in the dense pack ice of the Weddell Sea, unable to break free. For several months, the crew attempted to release the ship, but the shifting ice continued to tighten its grip. Eventually, in October 1915, the pressure from the ice began to crush the Endurance and it sank. Stranded thousands of miles from the nearest human, Shackleton and his crew survived on the ice for months before embarking on a perilous journey in lifeboats to reach safety. Against the odds, all 28 crewmembers of the Endurance managed to survive the ordeal – a feat that’s often credited to Shackleton’s leadership. 

CBS Sports is investing in women's mixed martial arts and will air events from the all-female promotion Invicta Fighting Champions throughout 2024.The network deal is a landmark for the small promotion, which currently lists just one champion on its website. However, Invicta FC is known in the fighting world as the premier female MMA brand, getting its start in 2012. It is owned by Anthem Sports and Entertainment, a media company that also owns the Fight Network, GameTV, TNA wrestling, and AXS TV.After parting ways with UFC Fight Pass in 2021, the promotion began airing its events on Anthem's networks. It will now move to the much larger platform under CBS. Five events will air on the network for the remainder of 2024, likely as a trial period, but it is unknown if the deal reaches into 2025."CBS Sports is the perfect partner for Invicta FC," President Shannon Knapp said in a press release. "By joining forces with their global platform, we're set to bring our world-class events to an even larger audience. 2024 will be a landmark year for us, packed with unparalleled matchups and title fights exclusive to Invicta," she continued."We are excited to showcase our world-class events and demonstrate why Invicta FC is the leading brand in women's MMA, giving fans around the world a front-row seat to the action."'Big networks put women's sports on primetime TV to prove a point and bump their viewership up.' — (@) Professional fighter and BTC Fight Promotions Champion T.J. Laramie told Blaze News that the deal was likely a move to prove a point about women's sports."I personally don't even know anyone who watches Invicta, it's a subsidiary of a bigger company and most likely just taking a loss every year," he explained. "If big companies like Bellator were in the red, I can only imagine what they were.""We're seeing this more and more with the PC culture," Laramie continued. "Big networks put women's sports on primetime TV to prove a point and bump their viewership up."The first event to air under the new deal will be Invicta FC 55: Bernando vs. Rubin on June 28, 2024.The card features Talita Bernando and Kay Hansen, both of whom have fought in the UFC. — (@) Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Messengers met this week in Indianapolis for the Southern Baptist Convention's annual meeting, electing Clint Pressley their new president. They also took up the controversial matter of female pastors. While the Executive Committee recently affirmed Article VI of the Baptist Faith and Message 2000, which limits the office of pastor to men "as qualified by Scripture," a 2023 estimate put the number of female pastors in cooperating Southern Baptist churches at over 1,840. The disfellowship of such churches continues apace the emergence of new female pastors, but some Southern Baptists sought to simplify matters with a vote at the annual meeting. The effort did not ultimately go their way. Arlington Baptist Church Pastor Mike Law's proposed constitutional amendment to the SBC Constitution, which would have formally prohibited the affirmation, appointment, or employment of a woman "as a pastor of any kind," failed in a close vote on Wednesday. The amendment needed a 66.7% majority vote to pass — which messengers managed last year in New Orleans. In Indianapolis, it fell short, capturing only 61%. 'We are just as complementarian as we were before that vote ever came into play.' After noting he supported the amendment, the newly elected president made abundantly clear the SBC's view on female pastors. "The constitutional amendment, what is known as the Law Amendment, was there to provide some clarity," said Clint Pressley, reported the Baptist Press. "That's what it was given to us for, what it was voted on about. But it's not necessary [in order] for our convention of churches to maintain a real sense of complementarianism. We are just as complementarian as we were before that vote ever came into play." Complementarianism maintains that men and women are equal in personhood, but that God created them for different roles. "I was for the Law Amendment. I thought it provided really great clarity. I have brothers that are just as theologically robust as I would like to be myself that were against it," continued Pressley. "Then we have maintained a real sense of God’s good design, not only in marriage, but how He's given us to live as men and women." Pressley underscored that while messengers walk away with the amendment not passing, the SBC has "not abandoned biblical truth. At all. So, you can be confident as a member of the Southern Baptist Convention, as a member of a church within the Convention that holds to the BF&M that they are doctrinally robust." Former SBC president J.D. Greear said of the decision, "We made the right call on this amendment, since passing it would have too rigidly enforced uniformity in ways that are out of character with our principles of cooperation. A friend of mine compared getting the right balance on this issue to putting together a piece of furniture. The IKEA instructions always warn you, 'Don't overtighten the screws.'" Those unconvinced the Law amendment would have been redundant or ruinous — as Greear previously suggested — were not the only ones miffed over the result. Leftists outside the SBC suggested Southern Baptists need to do more than simply kill such an amendment: They must give in to the egalitarian creep. 'Even without a 66% vote, the Southern Baptist Church has attempted to devalue the very women who God has called to further the Gospel.' The progressive organization Baptist Women in Ministry said in a statement, "Baptist Women in Ministry offers appreciation to all the messengers of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) who voted against the Law amendment BECAUSE of their commitment to support and affirm women serving as pastors of all kinds in the SBC." The group added, "Decades ago, the SBC codified its ideological position of disregarding God's call on women in the Baptist Faith and Message 2000. Therefore, the amendment considered today was not constructed on its own merit since the basis for it was already decided. Instead, women in ministry were used as props for the display of extreme conservativism [sic] in order to advance the power of a faction within the SBC." Molly Shoulta Tucker, the pronoun-providing pastor of the progressive Ridgewood Baptist Church, noted in the Courier Journal, "Even without a 66% vote, the Southern Baptist Church has attempted to devalue the very women who God has called to further the Gospel. Instead of believing women, or even offering a humble 'I don't know,' the Southern Baptist Church has said, 'We know. (And it's not you.)'" Messengers signaled to Tucker and other progressives that despite the result, SBC is far from caving on the issue. On Tuesday, messengers voted 6,759 to 563 to remove the First Baptist Church of Alexandria over its support for female pastors, reported the Associated Press. The now-disfellowshipped church is home to a female pastor for children and women. "We find no joy in making this recommendation, but have formed the opinion that the church's egalitarian beliefs regarding the office of pastor do not closely identify with the convention's adopted statement of faith," said Jonathan Sams, chair of the SBC's Credentials Committee. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

MSNBC’s Joy Reid and fellow race-baiter Jemele Hill — whom Jason Whitlock calls "two delusional black queens" — made some recent comments about WNBA rookie sensation Caitlin Clark. Of course, these comments were as bigoted as they consistently claim others to be. “Somebody very smart said to me recently that the challenge with women’s basketball is that most of the great players are black, but most of the stars are white,” Reid said to Hill. “And like you said, if there were charter flights, Britney Griner would not have ended up in the gulag, right?” Whitlock is not a fan. Not only does he note that Reid ridiculously blamed Griner’s arrest on the WNBA not having charter flights, but that both Reid and Hill are “trying desperately to look like white women.” “Why do I bring this up? Because when I talk about bigotry over business, the bigotry and the hostility stems from [the fact that] these women hate themselves and hate that they’re not white women,” Whitlock says. “Why else would you put on some cheap wig, some horse's hair, over the top of your head to look like a white woman?” "They're so full of jealousy and rage towards white women. Anybody that would hop on TV day after day with these ridiculous wigs on is telling you everything you need to know about their mentality as it relates to white women," he adds. Reid then brought up the “marketability” of Caitlin Clark. “This is a league that is largely, as you said, black women. It’s also largely LGBTQ. She’s a white, heterosexual woman. And so, if you’re trying to get white dads to go spend their money and buy season tickets, she seems like a marketing opportunity. How much of it is that?” Reid asks Hill. “I don’t know why people find that to be controversial,” Hill answers, noting that while Clark is talented, “it helps that she’s white, straight, and from Iowa.” “So, when you say that Caitlin Clark’s whiteness and the fact that she’s straight plays a role, underlining a role, in her popularity, that’s not a diss to Caitlin Clark. It’s just simply America,” she adds. Again, Whitlock finds it interesting that while discussing Clark’s marketability due to the color of her skin, both Hill and Reid have altered their appearance to seem more white. Both of them have significantly lightened their hair to appear blonde. “Here’s two black women, dressed as white women to be more marketable on TV. This is just facts,” Whitlock comments. Want more from Jason Whitlock?To enjoy more fearless conversations at the crossroads of culture, faith, sports, and comedy with Jason Whitlock, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

Climate Change Loons Who Rushed Congressional Baseball Game Crying About Being 'Brutalized' Goes SO Wrong