Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), Figure dans un Fauteuil (1909).

On Friday, I saw Gravity, a new film by Alfonso Cuarón with Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. It’s brilliant. Not least because of its many levels. Robbie Collin Expresses this well in his review for the Telegraph:

Your mind flits back to that phrase throughout Cuarón’s film, a science-fiction thriller of rare and diamond-hard brilliance, in which two astronauts come perilously unstuck from their moorings. But by the end, you realise you have mentally sketched in two commas to make sense of the film’s deep-down, soul-fattening theme. Yes: life, in space, is impossible. But mankind was not built for solitude, and in a wide, empty universe, the yearning for human-to-human contact is a force as powerful and inescapable as the one that keeps our feet bound to the planet.

The film has its own website with plenty of good images.

When browsing the Internet, I came across this article on existentialism at Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy. I like this part:

Although my freedom is absolute, it always takes place in a particular context. My body and its characteristics, my circumstances in a historical world, and my past, all weigh upon freedom. This is what makes freedom meaningful.

This is very important. Far too many dismisses free will and freedom on the ground that no one is able to choose one’s cultural context, but this is what makes freedom meaningful.

Found this on Instagram. Hilarious!

The Washington Post runs an article about Nadia Bolz-Weber, and I like this:

In her body and her theology, Bolz-Weber represents a new, muscular form of liberal Christianity, one that merges the passion and life-changing fervor of evangelicalism with the commitment to inclusiveness and social justice of mainline Protestantism. She’s a tatted-up, foul-mouthed champion to people sick of being belittled as not Christian enough for the right or too Jesus-y for the left.

Liberal religiosity is the way forward.

I’ve spent the weekend in Stockholm and paid a visit to the Royal Dramatic Theatre on Friday. I saw Peter Shaffer’s play Amadeus.

Before the play began, I took this photo of the Julius Kronberg’s big painting of Eros, the Greek god of love, and the Moirai, the three goddesses who preside over the birth and life of humans. It’s painted above the main stage.

Excerpted from the bad pastor’s booklet Porn-Again Christian: A Frank Discussion on Pornography & Masturbation for God’s Men, via Slog:

First, masturbation can be a form of homosexuality because it is a sexual act that does not involve a woman. If a man were to masturbate while engaged in other forms of sexual intimacy with his wife then he would not be doing so in a homosexual way. However, any man who does so without his wife in the room is bordering on homosexuality activity, particularly if he’s watching himself in a mirror and being turned on by his own male body.

You really can’t make this stuff up.

“Moshe Abutbul, the ultra-Orthodox mayor of Beit Shemesh, says no gays live in his town and homosexuality should be a police matter,” the Daily Telegraph reports.

It’s amazing how some people manage to deny what’s right in front of them. And it’s sad how religious fanatics destroy religion. Comments like these will, of course, be used by those who wish to attack Judaism.

“The Hawaii Senate has given its final approval to a bill to make marriage legal between couples of the same sex,” Pink News reports. Good news!

From Daily Mail:

A homophobic family in New Jersey has refused to tip a gay marine-turned-waitress, scrawling on the check that they ‘do not agree with her lifestyle.’

Dayna Morales said she was offended and hurt by how the couple, with two small children, treated her while she served them at Gallop Asian Bistro in Bridgewater Wednesday.

She sent the receipt to Have A Gay Day and the LGBT Facebook Group posted it online, where it has since garnered hundreds of supportive comments.

Some people are just beyond repair. But it’s nice to know that she gets so many supportive messages.

Robert Delaunay (1885–1941), Le Premier Disque (1913).

These are fascinating cases of severe necromancy.

“Sweden’s first retirement home for elderly members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) communities opened in Stockholm on Friday,” The Local reports. Great!

American novelist Jonathan Franzen says literary agents force writers to spend time on Twitter. Is he right?

“A Moscow gay club was the subject of a gas attack by unknown assailants on Saturday, who were expected to have been anti-gay extremists,” Pink News reports.

This is what happens when public debate legitimises contempt for a minority group. We see them same thing over and over. In Russian, anti-gay campaigners say children are at risk from gay people—and far too many believe them. To the extremists, this justifies violence against gay people.

The Guardian reports that the African country seeks to circumcise about 700,000 men by a new method that requires no surgery.