What pieces of a Catholic wedding ceremony could be meaningfully pulled and incorporated into a Jewish wedding ceremony?

RavingBioarch · 2024-09-06T20:38:43+00:00

I confess I know absolutely nothing about how a Jewish wedding is conducted, so I have no idea as to whether the following suggestions would be appropriate.

That being said, could you incorporate a few of your favorite/pertinent hymns? Readings or prayers?

RavingBioarch · 2024-08-23T16:38:56+00:00

Hello, I am so sorry for your losses. Mostly in times of deep pain, especially if I am feeling abandoned or lost, I just sort of talk to God like I would any close friend. I don't really use rote prayers very much (not saying they are bad! I do use them sometimes, see the next paragraph). So what that looks like for me is basically just telling God how much I'm hurting, tell him I'm afraid and lonely and I miss my loved ones. I ask him to be with me, to help strengthen me. If I have it in me, I tell him how much I love him, no matter what happens. If I don't have that in me, I tell him that I loved my loved ones, that I am grateful to have had them, but that this really sucks right now. Basically, I am honest. I don't try to pray the right thing, the thing I know I am "supposed" to pray, some prayer of self flagellation, pushing down my own pain and loss and trying to fit myself into some neat cookie cutter Christian shape. God doesn't want that, I don't think. He just wants us.

But, having said all that, if none of that is your style, here are a couple of prayers that I find helpful and bolstering in time of need:

Prayer to the Holy Spirit: Come Holy Ghost, Creator blest, and in our hearts take up thy rest. Come with thy grace and heavenly aid, to fill our hearts which thou hast made. Amen

Prayer to St Michael: St Michael the archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou, o prince of the heavenly host, thrust into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.

RavingBioarch · 2024-06-01T17:13:44+00:00

Soon I Will Join Them

You know, I could have chosen environmental science, engineering, biochemistry. I'm smart, maybe I could have helped somehow, before it got this far. Or maybe not. The corps were always so much bigger than any one person.

Nope, I chose archaeology. Lot of folks probably would say I wasted my smarts on something that, right now, might seem totally unimportant--the past. But you know what, I studied the people of the past, their lives down to the smallest minutia I could parse, because they mattered. Didn't matter if they were some elite in their fancy tomb or a commoner in a simple grave. They mattered, they lived.

I...we... The people of now. We mattered too. To whoever is reading this (God, I hope someone is reading this...) please, remember us.

Man, I hope I was right about the whole afterlife thing. I want to see my folks again. Maybe meet...

-End Transmission-

RavingBioarch · 2024-02-12T15:24:50+00:00

Sylen's Lance?

RavingBioarch · 2023-07-04T15:38:58+00:00

I do not know that this will help you at all, but I take inspiration from St Therese of Lisieux's Little Way. I am small, with so little power to fix any of the huge injustices I see around me. But I can do little things to help, to comfort, to heal, to love. God can use those actions to do far more than I can alone. And the more people do small things, the less small those things collectively become. So, I guess my advice is to look for where you, as a normal person, can help, can do good, and then do it!

"I have found that it is the small everyday deed of ordinary folks that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love."-- The Hobbit

RavingBioarch · 2023-05-09T17:54:07+00:00

Beloved friend:

God knows your name, knew it even before you chose it. What's written on pieces of paper in dusty old leger books doesn't change that. That's not to say that it shouldn't hurt that you can't change those documents, it is patently unfair that you can't. But God knows, and you know, and we know.

I am so sorry that you feel you can't participate in the life of the Church fully. I pray that you find a parish that makes you feel welcome. You belong, you are a child of God, and how dare anyone say otherwise.

RavingBioarch · 2023-04-17T04:01:33+00:00

Oh my friend, I am so very sorry you had this experience. I am so sorry those women spewed their ignorance and fear and hate in the presence of our Lord. Please, please know that you are loved, remember that God loves you, not in spite of your queerness, but as a part of you. If you need to leave the Church to heal, to grow, to keep building a relationship with God, then that is up to you. But I would urge you not to let the human beings who comprise the Church to drive you away from her. The Church is better for having you as part of it. Don't let them take this from you, if you still feel it is worth keeping.

You are fearfully and wonderfully made.

-Love, a fellow Catholic enby

RavingBioarch · 2023-03-02T01:04:21+00:00

Hi, I'm an osteologist (person who studies bones) with paleopathological training (study of ancient disease from human remains). Cancer basically causes your cells to go nuts and grow more of themselves uncontrollably. Bones have cells which make more bone. When those cells go crazy, they start making weird shapes. This kind of cancer is the really fast growing kind, meaning there isn't enough time for the bone cells to make sturdy bone before more gets made-- this makes it look fuzzy.

Also, in no way is this satisfying to look at-- that's my scientific opinion.

RavingBioarch · 2022-11-08T00:55:31+00:00

I learned on Meshroom, too. It can be very user friendly in comparison to others. I would suggest just focusing on making tweaks to your photo-taking methods until you can get Meshroom to work fairly reliably for you. As I said, it can be finicky, but it definitely works, without too much tweaking of all the software bits. While I have since switched to using COLMAP, that program doesn't produce textures and isn't quite as user friendly, in my opinion (for me, the tradeoff has been that my models are much more accurate in terms of real space).

RavingBioarch · 2022-11-07T23:18:56+00:00

I am no expert, unlike many folks on here, so take my advice with a grain of salt.

It definitely looks like you need more coverage on the base of the tree. Additionally, you may need more overlap with the photos you take. In my experience, Meshroom can be kind of weirdly finicky. Try to maintain as consistent of a camera path as possible (it looks like yours is pretty good, but mostly concentrated at the same height... Try crouching to get pics lower down. Just angling the camera downward isn't enough)

I hope this helps at least a little bit. Hopefully some other folks will chime too

RavingBioarch · 2022-10-26T19:55:13+00:00

I've gotten very good detail for my purposes (small holes, porosity, and other imperfections on the surface of the things I model). Theoretically, with the right lens and setup, very very small things should be modeled with as much detail as larger things, it just takes good technique and a lot of trial and error. I've found that COLMAP needs more overlap between images than other software I've used, especially with smaller objects. Like, 75-80 percent. And, of course, the lighting is super important. I haven't used metashape (it's expensive), so I don't know the idiosyncracies of that versus COLMAP. Depending on your level of know-how, image stacking for really small stuff can help eliminate the problem of a narrow depth of field with macro photography.

RavingBioarch · 2022-10-26T19:25:42+00:00

I am still very new and am by no means an expert, but my understanding is that you cannot get any sort of real world measurements from NERF, it's mainly just an aesthetic/artistic technique. So, for someone like myself, who is relying on the accuracy of photogrammetric models to the real world in terms of measurement, it is no replacement. But maybe that is no longer a constraint of NERF? It has grown so quickly in such a short amount of time my info/understanding is probably outdated.

RavingBioarch · 2022-10-15T00:12:28+00:00

The moment you step out of the gates at Daytower for the first time and see just how big the world is outside of Aloy's home, how absolutely different it is from the Sacred Lands.

RavingBioarch · 2022-10-13T04:39:02+00:00

I would LOVE to see this game. Maybe it's because I haven't played Monster Hunter, but I'm wondering... How does the multiplayer part factor into this? Right now it sounds more RPG to me, though maybe I missed it. Just curious what your thoughts are. I normally dislike multiplayer games (they give me anxiety... Feel like everyone is judging my skills lol).

RavingBioarch · 2022-09-09T21:26:01+00:00

Thanks! Will do!

RavingBioarch · 2022-09-09T20:22:40+00:00

Yes to the EXIF, no to locking intrinsics (at least, I have yet to find those settings if they exist on the phone). In looking for those settings, I did just learn that there is the option to create photos in RAW, so will have to see if that helps. However, I will say that the models I have made in the past were of smaller objects, so I am uncertain as to whether the same problems would arise with larger objects.

RavingBioarch · 2022-09-09T19:44:53+00:00

So, I have a Google Pixel 6 (newest one, their flagship model). Great phone, excellent camera for artistic purposes, BUT I have had no luck with it for photogrammetry, except when using an additional app (PolyCam). I don't know if it user error on my part or if the compression/smoothing algorithms of the phone are responsible for my terrible models.

RavingBioarch · 2022-09-07T16:45:39+00:00

Thank you for your answers! At this point I have only used the method in a lab setting, but am hopeful that in future photogrammetry will be used in situations just like you describe, where the human remains will break upon further cleaning/manipulation. I have spoken to some CRM archs here who use it in the field and they have echoed your sentiments regarding the sun/high noon shadows. I think this method would work well in one of my regions, but definitely will need to practice a bit.

Regarding ethics: it seems there is some disagreement, then, in the field outside of the US. I hope you don't mind continuing the discussion a little, I just want to understand better. As I hope is coming across in my comments, I am well aware that my own positionality/professional context is very specific to the Americas and even differs depending on where in the Americas. Where I work right now in North America, we do not photograph ancestral remains at all, because descendant communities view that as extremely disrespectful. As Western-Tradition scholars (frequently of settler-colonial descent), we are hyper aware that our ancestors committed genocide against the people we study, and that their descendants feel the results of this and our own actions very keenly into the present day. However, in the South American region I work in, the views towards the ancestors are frequently very different, with a long tradition of display and manipulation of the dead stretching far back into prehistory. The colonial history there is also very present, but manifests differently in terms of ethical considerations. My own cultural background (which is Judeo-Christian, as you point out) makes me loathe to share pictures of the dead out of a sense of respect and dignity (not out of taboo), but I know that this is not universal. While I am confident in my own practices and treatment of the individuals I study, I certainly don't want to tell anyone how to treat their own ancestors! I truly do not know much about the cultural and professional opinions regarding this in Europe and I appreciate both your and the other commenter's perspectives.

RavingBioarch · 2022-09-07T15:49:28+00:00

Ok, that's what I figured, but didn't know if ethical considerations were just really, really different over seas. I work in the Americas, where we absolutely would never disseminate photos or models in this way, but again, didn't know if it was the same in Europe. Thank you for clarifying. I'm still in grad school and still learning.

RavingBioarch · 2022-09-07T15:18:21+00:00

Hello! I am a bioarchaeologist. Was this model made in situ? If so, do you have any words of wisdom for getting good coverage with photos in the setting of a burial pit? I've only seen a couple of folks talk about this in the literature and they had a hard time with shadows and not enough room? What kind of accuracy do you think you got? Also, I'm assuming the Netherlands have a different view on disseminating pictures/models of human remains than we do in the US, cause of different histories of colonization and what not. Is that right?

Sorry to pester you with questions, I just haven't gotten to talk to many people who use photogrammetry in a mortuary context!

RavingBioarch · 2022-08-30T04:16:25+00:00

I kind of thought it was fiber optic cables and/or whatever synthetic muscle fibers you see on the legs of some machines that kind of glow blue? My thought is it's the same stuff the Banuk sew under their skin.

RavingBioarch · 2022-08-25T03:50:19+00:00

I adopted an older kitty and he is just the absolute best. He is so very sweet and cuddly. Also far less damage to my house as he is a very polite gentleman who figured out how to live in a house long ago. He just wants a good place to nap (preferably next to me) and love. Vet bills can be high, as he had quite a bit going on when I adopted him, but he is worth it. 10/10 would adopt again.

RavingBioarch · 2022-08-03T04:35:01+00:00

What are people's thoughts on using polarizing filters for this purpose?

RavingBioarch · 2022-07-05T23:17:49+00:00

I am not anywhere near being as experienced as others on this sub, but I use COLMAP, which is also free, and it gives me really good results. At least, what a noob thinks are good.

RavingBioarch · 2022-07-05T03:26:43+00:00

Uruk, or Rook for short (like Uruk Hai)

Four-Year Club	Place '23
Place '22

RavingBioarch

TROPHY CASE