Punctuation might not be the most interesting part of writing, but it's more important than I think many writers really acknowledge. It's what molds words into coherent thoughts, bringing structure that guides readers to the correct meaning. At the same time, it helps to shape the rhythm and pacing so readers to hear it in the right voice and cadence.

I've been doing a lot of proofreading and line editing work recently, which means that I've been thinking a lot about punctuation. Creative writing is trickier to proofread than articles or web copy because not everything is a hard-and-fast rule. There are some absolutes, sure, but other conventions are a matter of taste and style, which means a pass for correctness is more about consistency within the manuscript than it is following every line of a grammar guide to the letter. That said, something I've come to realize over my years of reading other people's fiction as an editor: punctuation usage is one of the clearest signs of a writer's maturity in their craft. Professional writers understand which rules are flexible, along with how, when, and why to bend them, and are intentional with every piece of punctuation they place in their prose. 

Something else I've learned as an editor is that there are some punctuation marks writers struggle with more than others. I'd say they exist in three tiers:

• The gimmes: Periods, question marks, ellipses, apotrophes, and parentheses. The rules for these are straightforward and most writers above the super beginner level understand how to use them.
• The semi-tricky: Colons, semicolons, quotation marks, and hyphens. The rules for these are slightly more complex, or they have multiple potential functions, and there are common errors writers make when using them.
• The super-tricky: Commas and em-dashes. The rules for these are squirrely and can vary depending on the style guide, and even experienced writers often don't know the correct usage.

Mistakes can still happen with the gimmes, but that's what they are—the writer just forgot to type a period or ending parenthsis, but they know it's supposed to be there. Those second two categories are where I'm most likely to see writers who clearly aren't sure about the rules. So I thought it might be helpful to do a quick rundown on the rules as they apply to fiction. 

The semi-tricky

Let's knock these ones out first, because they're ones that most writers get mostly right. 

Colons

There are a few potential uses for colons:

1. To introduce a list (Ex: There were three things on the sandwich: bacon, lettuce, and tomato.)

2. To introduce a quotation (Ex: As Captain Picard said: “Make it so.”)

3. To set off a word or phrase that you want to emphasize (Ex: He had come for just one reason: revenge.)

4. To connect two ideas when the second one explains or answers the first. (Ex: There was only one option: to keep moving forward.)

Colons are also used for things like times, ratios, and subtitles, but within the prose those are the main ways you'd use them. The biggest mistakes I see writers make with them:

• Using a colon like a semicolon. A colon can connect two complete ideas, but only if they're related in the ways described above. To simply link two related ideas, a semicolon is the correct choice. 
• The phrase before the colon needs to be a complete sentence, which is a rule that writers sometimes neglect to follow

Semicolons

There are two potential uses for semicolons:

1. To link two complete sentences that are related to each other.

2. To separate items in a list when the list items have commas.

The first use is by far the most common. A good rule of thumb for whether you can use a semicolon is that the two phrases should also be grammatically correct if you used a period instead. The semicolon just makes the connection between them stronger and has a slightly different rhythm, with a mental pause that's somewhere between a comma and a period. The most common mistake people make with semicolons is using them when they should actually use a comma, and doing that mental check to make sure both sides are a complete sentence is the best way to avoid it. 

Quotation marks

There are a few ways that double quotation marks (“quote”) can be used:

1. To signal spoken dialogue or a direct quote.

2. To enclose the title of a song, story, or poem.

3. To convey skepticism or that a word is being used ironically, sarcastically, or as a euphemism (Ex: The cafe's “fresh” bread was baked a week ago.)

There are also single quotes ('quote') which are primarily used for quotes contained within quotes (Ex: Then Jane said, “But Tommy said, 'I didn't do it,' and I believe him.”). Some people prefer single quotes for showing skepticism or irony to differentiate them from direct dialogue, which can be a correct use as long as it's done consistently. 

Some mistakes I see people make with quotation marks:

• Using quotation marks to emphasize words. For straight emphasis, without adding any slant meaning, italics or all caps are a better way to go.
• Incorrect punctuation around quotation marks. If the quotation mark encloses dialogue or a quote, punctuation marks like commas, periods, and question marks should go within the quotation marks. If the marks just enclose a title or word, American English says to still enclose the punctuation, but British says to leave it on the outside. 

Hyphens

Along with uses like writing dates, hyphens are commonly used in a few ways in prose:

1. To connect words in a compound modifier (a multi-word descriptive phrase) that comes before a noun. (Ex: The best-selling book, the seven-year-old kid)

2. To join the parts of a compound word (Ex: Mother-in-law)

3. In written numbers

4. To connect prefixes and suffixes that would create double letters or might otherwise be misread (Ex: Co-op, re-creation), or attach prefixes that always use a hyphen (ex- and self-).

There are also some addendums to those rules above, and these are the parts that I usually see trip writers up. These include: 

• A hyphen shouldn't be used in a compound modifier when the first word is an adverb ending in -ly (Ex: I entered the brightly lit room.)
• Multi-word modifiers that are proper nouns are never hyphenated
• When “all” is part of a compound, it's hyphenated when it's being used as an adjective both before and after nouns (Ex: The god was all-knowing), but not hyphenated when it's being used as an adverb (Ex: The lights flickered all at once).

Other common mistakes I see around hyphens:

• Compound modifiers that come after a noun aren't hyphenated, even when it's correct to hyphenate it before the noun
• The hyphen is a different punctuation mark than an en-dash (used for ranges) or an em-dash (which we'll get to), so make sure you're using the right mark length for the situation

The super-tricky

With all those punctuation marks above, the rules are mostly clear and make sense, and are relatively easy to explain and understand. When writers misuse them, it's usually because they don't understand one of the secondary uses or more nuanced rules. 

With em-dashes and commas, that is not the case. Each of them has its best recommended uses, but they also have a lot of wiggle room and space for stylistic variation. This makes them both very powerful and somewhat infuriating, especially when you're in the proofreading stage and want to make sure a piece of writing is exactly right. Here are the basic rules for each:

Em-dashes

So something else you'll see with both of these is that they have a lot of potential uses, which is one of the reasons they're so often misused and misunderstood. An em-dash can be used:

1. To show an interruption in dialogue, or in thought or action when used in narration. (Ex: I started left—then juked right when I saw my opponent shift his weight.)

2. To insert an aside, often one that interrupts the flow of thought or is being presented with emphasis. (Ex: I couldn’t believe—after everything we’d been through—that he would betray me.) In this way, it functions similar to parentheses, but has a more immediate feel.

3. To create emphasis or a dramatic pause at the end of a sentence (Ex: She saw him for what he was—dangerous.) In this way, it functions similar to a colon.

4. To connect two independent clauses. In this way, it functions similar to a semicolon but feels punchier and more abrupt. (Ex: I’d already called twice—I didn’t see a point trying a third time.)

They can also function in the same way as colons in their other uses, or be used to show that words were unspoken or censored, similar to an ellipsis, but the uses above are the most common. 

The biggest mistake I see writers make with em-dashes is, honestly, overusing them. They're a punctuation mark that conveys a sense of action and quick movement, which makes them very appealing. But that also means they create a lurching, stilted rhythm that can get tiring for the reader when too many happen too close together. 

Em-dashes also need to be treated similarly to colons and semicolons when they're being used to link entire sentences. The clause before the em-dash needs to be a complete thought, unless the em-dash is being used as an aside or interruption. It's those “excepts” that make this punctuation mark tricky. 

Commas

Commas are the most difficult punctuation mark to learn the full rules for. Not only are there a lot of them, but they change between style guides and versions of English, and the rules are often different depending on the context. There are firmer rules about comma use in something like a scholarly article, for instance, than there are in a work of fiction.

That said, there are some places that you always need to use a comma, no matter what kind of writing you're doing: 

1. To separate items in a list

2. To separate equally weighted adjectives in sequence before a noun. (Ex: “the wide, dusty path” but “the wide gravel path”) If the sentence would sound just as natural with the two adjectives flipped, then there should be a comma between them.

3. Before a direct address in dialogue

4. Before a coordinating conjunction that joins two independent clauses (Ex: He waved to her, but she was already driving away.)

5. After an introductory word or phrase (Ex: After school, we went to the mall.)

6. Around phrases that are nonessential and nonrestrictive. (Ex: The travelers, weary from a long journey, shuffled into the inn.) In other words, if removing the phrase wouldn't change the core meaning of the sentence, then it should be set off by commas (or paired em-dashes).

7. To set off interjections or interruptions in a less abrupt way than with em-dashes. (Ex: The boy, not the dog, had broken the plate.)

There are also some places where a comma should never be used, like:

1. Between a subject and its verb

2. Between adjectives in sequence that aren't equally weighted

3. After a conjunction

4. To join two independent clauses that aren't linked by a conjunction (Ex: “Joe called, Bob answered” is incorrect. It should be “Joe called; Bob answered” or “Joe called, and Bob answered.”)

And we're not done yet! There's another set of places where a comma is sometimes used, or can be used, or is only correct some of the time, like:

1. Though commas generally shouldn't be used before “because”, they should be used if the meaning of the sentence would otherwise be unclear (Ex: “Jack didn't go, because he was mad at Jill.” Without the comma, it's not clear whether Jack did or did not go).

2. While a comma is always correct between complete clauses joined by a conjunction, the comma can be omitted if both the clauses are fairly short. Exactly how many words counts as “short” is a matter of interpretation, but generally is around 5 words or under.

3. Similarly, the comma after an introductory word may be omitted if the phrase that follows is short.

4. Commas are optional around words like too, though, either, or also when they’re used as interjections. Generally, they read slightly gentler and with a slower pace with commas, but will read faster without the comma.

5. Within dialogue, commas are sometimes used in otherwise non-grammatical ways to signify a pause or breath. An ellipsis or em-dash can also be used for this. Generally, an ellipsis is going to read like a longer pause, while an em-dash is going to read as more abrupt, and the comma reads like a short, softer break.

6. An optional comma may be added in complex sentences, where separating words or phrases would add clarity to a passage that is currently ambiguous or confusing. 

The truth is, when it comes to those more nebulous uses, it often comes down to the level of lyricism the author is going for and the stylistic preferences of the editor who's preparing it for publication. For authors, I would say the most important thing is to be consistent and intentional with how you employ punctuation like commas and em-dashes. There's no single right answer in a lot of cases, and the punctuation choices you make are a lot of what shape your personal style and voice.

See similar posts: 

#Grammar #Punctuation #WritingAdvice

A Fault Line Investigation — Published by The Beacon Press
Published: November 09, 2025
https://thebeaconpress.org/the-u-s-government-shutdown-aca-snap-crs-bipartisan-gaslighting-and-the

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Executive Breath

The U.S. government shutdown, now in its 40th day as of November 9, 2025, is the longest in history, surpassing the 35-day 2018–2019 closure. At its heart is a dispute over Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies and Medicaid adjustments, with Democrats refusing to pass appropriations without their extension and Republicans insisting on a “clean” continuing resolution (CR). This impasse — amid furloughs of 650,000 federal workers, flight delays, and SNAP uncertainties for 42 million — is no budgetary oversight. It's a scar of bipartisan partisanship, where gaslighting — deliberate distortion to fracture trust — has become default governance, eroding the constitutional covenant that officials serve “We the People” (Preamble).

The official narrative: Republicans blame Democrats for “using the shutdown to fund illegal immigrants' healthcare,” while Democrats accuse Republicans of “sabotaging” the ACA.

The truth under scrutiny: Both sides wield gaslighting as a tool of self-preservation, breaching oaths to “support and defend” the Constitution (5 U.S.C. § 3331) for competing agendas that fracture public trust. Polls show 45–53% blame Republicans, 27–39% blame Democrats, and 22% see both at fault — the gaslighting's scar, where reality fractures under partisan “alternative facts.”
> Sources: Quinnipiac University Poll (Nov 2025), CNBC All-America Economic Survey (Nov 2025)

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The Gaslighting Fracture: Bipartisan Narratives as Default Practice

Gaslighting — making the public question reality through denial, distortion, and repetition — is not new, but the 2025 shutdown has weaponized it to unprecedented levels. Republicans frame Democrats as “gaslighting” by “blaming Republicans for a shutdown Democrats caused,” while Democrats frame Republicans as “sabotaging” to dismantle the ACA.

The truth under scrutiny: Both sides employ it as default, eroding trust in institutions and the covenant — a “post-truth” loop where facts fracture under partisan “alternative facts” (e.g., Republicans' “Democrats are suffering no pain” vs. Democrats' “Republicans are closing rural hospitals”). Polls show 45% blame Republicans (vs. 39% Democrats), but 22% see both at fault — the gaslighting's scar, fracturing public agency.
> Sources: Quinnipiac University Poll (Nov 2025), Reuters/Ipsos (Nov 2025)

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The Covenant Fracture: Oath Breaches as Covenant Betrayal

The Constitution's covenant — government as “of the People, by the People, for the People” (Preamble) — demands officials “support and defend” it (5 U.S.C. § 3331), swearing an oath to prioritize public trust over agendas.

The truth under scrutiny: Shutdown partisanship breathes as oath breach —
– Democrats leverage the shutdown for ACA extensions (e.g., Schumer's “we won't blink,” ignoring 42 million SNAP recipients' suffering),
– Republicans gaslight by blaming “radical left” for a shutdown they control (e.g., Trump's “Democrats are suffering no pain” vs. 4,000+ layoffs, per 2025 polls).

Breaches include:
– Democrats' “leverage” of SNAP (withholding CRs, fracturing Article I compromise),
– Republicans' “veto threats” (e.g., Trump's pocket rescissions, ignoring Article I funding powers, per GAO 2025).

The covenant fractures: 75% of Americans see shutdown as “breach of trust” (Quinnipiac 2025 poll), with 45% blaming Republicans (53% in CNBC poll), but 22% seeing bipartisan fault — the gaslighting's scar.
> Sources: Quinnipiac University Poll (Nov 2025), CNBC All-America Economic Survey (Nov 2025), GAO Report #GAO-25-108 (2025)

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The SNAP Fracture: Gaslighting in the Shutdown's Shadow

The shutdown's “weapon” rings in SNAP cuts: The Trump administration's “half-payment” (using $4.6B contingency funds for 50% benefits, despite $5B reserve) affects 42 million recipients, with 16 million children, 8 million seniors, and 2 million veterans at risk.

• Republicans gaslight as “Democrat shutdown” (e.g., Schumer “failed to negotiate,” per Trump Truth Social, 2025), ignoring their 53–47 Senate majority and House control.
  
• Democrats counter-gaslight as “Republican sabotage” (e.g., “Trump's veto threat,” per Schumer, 2025), ignoring 15 failed CR votes.
  

The truth under scrutiny: 42 million (1 in 8 Americans) face “half” benefits or delays — a “catastrophic” fracture (USDA 2025). Courts order full funding (Rhode Island/Massachusetts, 2025), but the administration “undoes” it, threatening penalties — gaslighting as “suffering no pain” (Trump, 2025). 25 states sue, calling it “illegal” — the covenant's scar. Polls show 45% blame Republicans (53% in CNBC), 39% Democrats — the gaslighting's loop.
> Sources: USDA Contingency Plan (2025), Rhode Island v. Trump (2025), CNBC All-America Economic Survey (Nov 2025)

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Action Demand (Pillar 7)

Demand OIG audit of:
– Executive overreach in SNAP contingency use
– Congressional withholding of CRs in violation of Article I
– Oath compliance under 5 U.S.C. § 3331
→ File OIG Complaint
→ Reference: GAO-25-108, Quinnipiac Poll (Nov 2025)

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Picture this: you photograph your electricity bill, speak a casual instruction in Manglish (“Pay this lah”), and watch as an artificial intelligence system parses the image, extracts the payment details, and completes the transaction in seconds. No app navigation. No account numbers. No authentication dance with one-time passwords.

This isn't speculative technology. It's Ryt Bank, Malaysia's first fully AI-powered financial institution, which launched to the public on 25 August 2025. Built on ILMU, the country's first homegrown large language model developed by YTL AI Labs in collaboration with Universiti Malaya, Ryt Bank represents something far more consequential than another digital banking app. It's a fundamental rethinking of the relationship between humans and their money, powered by conversational AI that understands not just English and Bahasa Melayu, but the linguistic hybrid of Manglish and even regional dialects like Kelantanese.

The stakes extend far beyond Malaysia's borders. As the world's first AI-native bank (rather than a traditional bank retrofitted with AI features), Ryt Bank is a living experiment in whether ordinary people will trust algorithms with their financial lives. The answer could reshape banking across Southeast Asia and beyond, particularly in emerging markets where digital infrastructure has leapfrogged traditional banking channels.

But here's the uncomfortable question underlying all the breathless press releases and promotional interest rates: are we witnessing genuine financial democratisation, or simply building more sophisticated systems that will ultimately concentrate power in the hands of those who control the algorithms?

The Digital Banking Gold Rush

To understand Ryt Bank's significance, you need to grasp the broader transformation sweeping through Malaysia's financial landscape. In April 2022, Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM), the country's central bank, issued five digital banking licences, deliberately setting out to disrupt a sector that had grown comfortably oligopolistic. The licensed entities included GXBank (backed by Grab), Boost Bank, AEON Bank, KAF Digital Bank, and Ryt Bank, a joint venture between YTL Digital Capital and Singapore-based Sea Limited.

The timing was strategic. Malaysia already possessed the infrastructure foundations for digital financial transformation: 97% internet penetration, 95% smartphone ownership, and 96% of adults with active deposit accounts, according to Bank Negara Malaysia data from 2024. The country had surpassed its 2026 digital payment target of 400 transactions per capita ahead of schedule, reaching 405 transactions per capita by 2024. What was missing wasn't connectivity but innovation in how financial services were delivered and experienced.

The results have been dramatic. GXBank, first to market, accumulated 2.16 billion ringgit (approximately 489 million US dollars) in customer deposits within the first nine months of 2024, becoming the largest digital bank by asset size at 2.4 billion ringgit by September 2024. Boost Bank, launching later, had attracted 399 million ringgit in assets within its first three months of operations.

Yet awareness hasn't automatically translated to adoption. Of the 93% of Malaysians who reported awareness of digital banks in Q4 2024, only 50% had actually become users. This gap reveals something crucial: people remain uncertain about entrusting their money to app-based financial institutions, particularly those without physical branches or familiar brand legacies.

Ryt Bank entered this cautious market with a differentiator: AI so deeply integrated that the bank's entire interface could theoretically be conversational. No menus to navigate. No forms to fill. Just talk to your bank like you'd talk to a financially savvy friend.

The Intelligence Behind the Interface

ILMU, the large language model powering Ryt Bank's AI assistant, represents a significant technological achievement beyond its banking application. Developed by YTL AI Labs, ILMU is designed to rival global AI leaders like GPT-4 whilst being specifically optimised for Malaysian linguistic and cultural contexts. In Malay MMLU benchmarks (which test language model understanding), ILMU reportedly outperforms GPT-4, DeepSeek V3, and GPT-5, particularly in handling regional dialects.

This localisation matters profoundly. Global AI models trained predominantly on English-language internet content often stumble when encountering the linguistic complexity of multilingual societies. Malaysia operates in at least three major languages (Bahasa Melayu, English, and Mandarin), plus numerous regional variations and the unique creole of Manglish. A banking AI that understands “I want to pindah duit to my mak's account lah” (mixing Malay, English, and colloquial structure) is genuinely useful in ways that a generic chatbot translated into Malay would never be.

The technical architecture allows Ryt AI to handle transactions through natural conversation in text or voice, process images to extract financial information (bills, receipts, payment QR codes), and provide spending insights by analysing transaction patterns. During the early access period, users reported completing full account onboarding, including electronic Know Your Customer (eKYC) verification, in approximately two minutes.

But technical sophistication creates new vulnerabilities. Every AI interaction involves sending potentially sensitive financial data to language model systems that process, interpret, and act on that information. Dr Adnan Zaylani Mohamad Zahid, Assistant Governor of Bank Negara Malaysia, has articulated these concerns explicitly. In a July 2024 speech on banking in the era of generative AI, he outlined risks including AI model bias, unstable performance in self-learning systems, third-party dependencies, data privacy vulnerabilities, and emerging cyber threats like AI-enabled phishing and deepfakes. His message was clear: “Human judgment must remain central to risk management oversight.”

The Trust Equation

Trust in financial institutions is a peculiar thing. It's simultaneously deeply rational (based on regulatory frameworks, deposit insurance, historical performance) and thoroughly emotional (shaped by brand familiarity, peer behaviour, and gut instinct). AI banking disrupts both dimensions.

On the rational side, Ryt Bank is licensed by Bank Negara Malaysia and protected by Perbadanan Insurans Deposit Malaysia (PIDM), which guarantees deposits up to 250,000 ringgit per depositor. Yet according to 2024 global banking surveys, 58% of banking customers across 39 countries worry about data security and hacking risks. Only 28% believe their bank effectively communicates data protection measures, and only 40% fully trust their bank's transparency about cybersecurity.

These trust deficits are amplified when AI enters the picture. Research on consumer trust in AI financial services reveals that despite technological sophistication, adoption “hinges significantly on human trust and confidence.” Malaysia isn't immune to these anxieties. A TikTok user named sherryatig captured the sentiment bluntly when commenting on Ryt Bank: “The current banking system is already susceptible to fraud. NOT in my wildest dream to allow transactions from prompt.”

The regional context intensifies these worries. Consumers across Southeast Asia hold banks and fintech firms primarily responsible for safeguarding against financial crimes, and surveys indicate that more than half of respondents across five Southeast Asian markets expressed growing fears about rising online fraud and hacking.

Yet early Ryt Bank user reviews suggest cautious optimism. Coach Alex Tan praised the “smooth user experience” and two-minute onboarding. Tech reviewers noted that “even in beta, Ryt AI is impressively intuitive, making banking feel less like a task and more like a conversation.” The AI's ability to process screenshots of bank account details shared via WhatsApp and automatically populate transfer fields has been highlighted as solving a genuine pain point.

These positive early signals, however, come from early adopters who tend to be more tech-savvy and risk-tolerant than the broader population. The real test will come when Ryt Bank attempts to expand beyond enthusiastic technophiles to the mass market, including older users, rural communities, and those with limited digital literacy.

The Personalisation Paradox

One of AI banking's most touted benefits is hyper-personalisation: financial services tailored precisely to individual circumstances, goals, and behaviour patterns. The global predictive analytics market in banking is forecast to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 19.42% through 2030. Bank of America's Erica virtual assistant, which uses predictive analytics, has over 19 million users and reportedly generated a 28% increase in product adoption compared to traditional marketing approaches.

This sounds wonderful until you examine the underlying dynamics. Personalisation requires extensive data collection and analysis. Every transaction, every app interaction, every moment of hesitation before clicking “confirm” becomes data that feeds the AI's understanding of you. The more personalised your banking experience, the more comprehensively you're surveilled.

Moreover, AI-driven personalisation in financial services has repeatedly demonstrated troubling patterns of bias and discrimination. An analysis of Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data from the Urban Institute in 2024 revealed that Black and Brown borrowers were more than twice as likely to be denied loans compared to white borrowers. Research on fintech algorithms found that whilst they discriminated 40% less than face-to-face lenders, Latinx and African-American groups still paid 5.3 basis points more for purchase mortgages and 2.0 basis points more for refinance mortgages compared to white counterparts.

These disparities emerge because AI models learn from historical data that encodes past discrimination. The technical challenge is compounded by what researchers call the “fairness paradox”: you cannot directly measure bias against protected categories without collecting data about those categories, yet collecting such data raises legitimate concerns about potential misuse.

Bank Negara Malaysia has acknowledged these challenges. The central bank's Chief Risk Officers' Forum developed an AI Governance Framework outlining responsible AI principles, including fairness, accountability, transparency, and reliability. In August 2025, BNM unveiled its AI financial regulation framework at MyFintech Week 2025 and initiated a ten-week public consultation period (running until 17 October 2025) seeking feedback on sector-specific AI definitions, regulatory clarity needs, and AI trends that could shape the sector over the next three to five years.

But regulatory frameworks often lag behind technological deployment. By the time comprehensive AI banking regulations are finalised and implemented, millions of Malaysians may already be using systems whose algorithmic decision-making remains opaque even to regulators.

The Inclusion Question

Digital banks, including AI-powered ones, have positioned themselves as champions of financial inclusion, promising to serve the underserved. The rhetoric is appealing, but does it match reality?

Malaysia's financial inclusion challenges are substantial. According to the 2023 RinggitPlus Malaysian Financial Literacy Survey, 71% of respondents could save 500 ringgit or less monthly, whilst 67% had emergency savings lasting three months or less. The Khazanah Research Institute reports that 55% of Malaysians spend equal to or more than their earnings, living paycheck to paycheck. Approximately 15% of the 23 million Malaysian adults remain unbanked, according to The Business Times. MSMEs face a particularly acute 90 billion ringgit funding gap.

Bank Negara Malaysia data indicates that close to 60% of customers at GXBank, AEON Bank, and Boost Bank come from traditionally underserved segments, including low-income households and rural communities. Boost Bank's surveys in Kuala Terengganu found that 97% of respondents did not have 2,000 ringgit readily available.

However, digital banks face inherent limitations in reaching the truly marginalised. One of the primary challenges is bridging the digital divide, particularly in underserved communities where many individuals and businesses, especially in rural areas, lack necessary devices and digital literacy. Immigrants and refugees often lack the documentation required for digital identity verification. Elderly populations may struggle with smartphone interfaces regardless of how “intuitive” they're designed to be.

There's also an economic tension in AI banking's inclusion promise. Building and maintaining sophisticated AI systems requires substantial ongoing investment. Those costs must eventually be recovered through fees, product cross-selling, or data monetisation. The business model that supports free or low-cost AI banking may ultimately depend on collecting and leveraging user data in ways that create new forms of exploitation, even as they expand access.

Ryt Bank launched with 4% annual interest on savings (on the first 20,000 ringgit, until 30 November 2025), unlimited 1.2% cashback on overseas transactions with no conversion fees, and a PayLater feature providing instant credit up to 1,499 ringgit with 0% interest if repaid within the first month. These are genuinely attractive terms. But as reviews have noted, “long-term value will depend on whether these benefits are extended after November 2025.” The pattern is familiar from countless fintech launches: aggressive promotional terms to build user base, followed by monetisation pivots.

The Human Cost of Efficiency

AI banking promises remarkable efficiency gains. Chatbots and virtual assistants can handle up to 50% of customer inquiries, according to industry estimates. Denmark's DNB bank reported that within six months, its chatbot had automated over 50% of all incoming chat traffic and interacted with over one million customers.

But efficiency has casualties. Across Southeast Asia, approximately 11,000 bank branches are expected to close by 2030, representing roughly 18% of current physical banking presence. In Malaysia specifically, strategy consulting firm Roland Berger projects nearly 567 bank branch closures by 2030, a 23% decline from 2,467 branches in 2020 to approximately 1,900 branches.

These closures disproportionately affect communities that already face financial service gaps. Rural areas lose physical banking presence. Elderly customers who prefer face-to-face service, immigrants who need in-person assistance, and small business owners who require relationship banking all find themselves pushed toward digital channels they may neither trust nor feel competent to use.

The employment implications extend beyond branch closures. By the end of 2024, 71% of banking institutions and development financial institutions had implemented at least one AI application, up 56% from the previous year. Each of those AI applications represents tasks previously performed by humans. Customer service representatives, loan officers, fraud analysts, and financial advisers increasingly find their roles either eliminated or transformed into oversight positions managing AI systems.

Industry estimates suggest AI could generate between 200 billion and 340 billion US dollars annually for banking. Yet there's a troubling asymmetry: those efficiency gains and cost savings accrue primarily to financial institutions and shareholders, whilst job losses and service degradation are borne by workers and vulnerable customer segments.

The Algorithmic Black Box

Perhaps the most profound challenge AI banking introduces is opacity. Traditional banking, for all its faults, operates on rules that can theoretically be understood, questioned, and challenged. AI systems, particularly large language models like ILMU, operate fundamentally differently. They make decisions based on pattern recognition across vast training datasets, identifying correlations that may not correspond to any human-comprehensible logic. Even the engineers who build these systems often cannot fully explain why an AI reached a particular conclusion, a problem known in the field as the “black box” dilemma.

This opacity has serious implications for financial fairness. If an AI denies you credit, declines a transaction, or flags your account for fraud investigation, can you meaningfully challenge that decision? Consumer complaints about banking chatbots reveal experiences of “feeling stuck and frustrated, receiving inaccurate information, and paying more in junk fees” when systems malfunction or misunderstand user intent.

Explainability is considered a core tenet of fair lending systems, yet may work against AI adoption. America's legal and regulatory structure to protect against discrimination and enforce fair lending “is not well equipped to handle AI,” according to legal analyses. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has outlined that financial institutions are expected to hold themselves accountable for protecting consumers against algorithmic bias and discrimination, but how regulators can effectively audit systems they don't fully understand remains an open question.

Bank Negara Malaysia's approach has been to apply technology-agnostic regulatory frameworks. Rather than targeting AI specifically, existing policies like Risk Management in IT (RMiT) and Management of Customer Information and Permitted Disclosures (MCIPD) address associated risks comprehensively. The BNM Regulatory Sandbox facilitates testing of innovative AI use cases, allowing supervised experimentation.

Yet regulatory sandboxes, by definition, exist outside normal rules. The question is whether lessons learned in sandboxes translate to effective regulation of AI systems operating at population scale.

The Cyber Dimension

AI banking's expanded attack surface introduces new cybersecurity challenges. According to research on AI cybersecurity in banking, 80% of organisational leaders express concerns about data privacy and security, whilst only 10% feel prepared to meet regulatory requirements. The areas of greatest concern for financial organisations are adaptive cyberattacks (93% of respondents), AI-powered botnets (92%), and polymorphic malware (83%).

These aren't theoretical threats. Malware specifically targeting mobile banking apps has emerged across Southeast Asia. ToxicPanda and TgToxic, which emerged in mid-2022, target Android mobile users with bank and finance apps in Indonesia, Taiwan, and Thailand. These threats will inevitably evolve to target AI banking interfaces, potentially exploiting the conversational nature of systems like Ryt AI to conduct sophisticated social engineering attacks.

Consider the scenario: a user receives a message that appears to be from Ryt Bank's AI assistant, using familiar conversational style and regional dialect, requesting confirmation of a transaction. The user, accustomed to interacting with their bank via natural language, might not scrutinise the interaction as carefully as they would a traditional suspicious email. AI-enabled phishing could exploit the very user-friendliness that makes AI banking appealing.

Poor data quality poses another challenge, with 40% of respondents citing it as a reason AI initiatives fail, followed by privacy concerns (38%) and limited data access (36%). An AI banking system is only as reliable as its training data and ongoing inputs. Corrupted data, whether through malicious attack or simple error, could lead to widespread incorrect decisions.

What Happens When the Algorithm Fails?

Every technological system eventually fails. Servers crash. Software has bugs. Networks go offline. In traditional banking, these failures are inconvenient but manageable. But what happens when an AI-native bank experiences a critical failure?

If ILMU's language processing system misunderstands a transaction instruction and sends your rent money to the wrong account, what recourse do you have? If a software update introduces bugs that cause the AI to provide incorrect financial advice, who bears responsibility for decisions made based on that advice?

These questions aren't adequately addressed in current regulatory frameworks. Consumer complaints about banking chatbots show that whilst they're useful for basic inquiries, “their effectiveness wanes as problems become more complex.” Users report “wasted time, feeling stuck and frustrated” when chatbots cannot resolve issues and no clear path to human assistance exists.

Ryt Bank's complete dependence on AI amplifies these concerns. Traditional banks and even other digital banks maintain human customer service channels as fallbacks. If Ryt Bank's differentiator is comprehensive AI integration, building parallel human systems undermines that efficiency model. Yet without adequate human backup, users become entirely dependent on algorithmic systems that may not be equipped to handle edge cases, emergencies, or their own malfunctions.

The phrase “computer says no” has become cultural shorthand for the frustrating experience of being denied something by an inflexible automated system with no human override. AI banking risks creating “algorithm says no” scenarios where financial access is controlled by systems that cannot be reasoned with, appealed to, or overridden even when obviously wrong.

The Sovereignty Dimension

An underappreciated aspect of ILMU's significance is technological sovereignty. For decades, Southeast Asian nations have depended on Western or Chinese technology companies for critical digital infrastructure. Malaysia's development of a homegrown large language model capable of competing with global leaders like GPT-4 represents a strategic assertion of technological independence.

This matters because AI systems encode the values, priorities, and cultural assumptions of their creators. A language model trained predominantly on Western internet content will inevitably reflect Western cultural norms. ILMU's deliberate optimisation for Bahasa Melayu, Manglish, and regional dialects ensures that Malaysian linguistic and cultural contexts are centred rather than accommodated as afterthoughts.

The geopolitical implications extend further. As AI becomes infrastructure for financial services, healthcare, governance, and other critical sectors, nations that control AI development gain significant strategic advantages. Malaysia's ILMU project demonstrates regional ambition to participate in AI development rather than remaining passive consumers of foreign technology.

However, technological sovereignty has costs. Maintaining and advancing ILMU requires sustained investment in AI research, computing infrastructure, and talent development. Malaysia must compete globally for AI expertise whilst building domestic capacity.

Ryt Bank's use of ILMU creates a testbed for Malaysian AI at scale. If ILMU performs reliably in the demanding environment of real-time financial transactions involving millions of users, it validates Malaysia's AI capabilities and could attract international attention and investment. If ILMU encounters significant problems, it could damage credibility and confidence in Malaysian AI development more broadly.

The Question of Control

Ultimately, the transformation AI banking represents is about control: who controls financial data, who controls access to financial services, and who controls the algorithms that increasingly mediate between people and their money.

Traditional banking, for all its inequities and exclusions, distributed control across multiple points. Bank employees exercised discretion in lending decisions. Regulators audited and enforced rules. Customers could negotiate, complain, and exert pressure through collective action. The system was far from perfectly democratic, but power wasn't entirely concentrated.

AI banking centralises control in the hands of those who design, train, and operate the algorithms. Those entities (corporations, in Ryt Bank's case the YTL Group and Sea Limited partnership) gain unprecedented insight into user behaviour, financial circumstances, and potentially even personal lives, given how much can be inferred from transaction patterns. They decide what features to build, what data to collect, which users to serve, and how to monetise the platform.

Regulatory oversight provides some counterbalance, but regulators face profound information asymmetries. They lack the technical expertise, computational resources, and internal access necessary to fully understand or audit complex AI systems. Even when regulators identify problems, enforcement mechanisms designed for traditional banking may be inadequate for addressing algorithmic harms that manifest subtly across millions of automated decisions.

The power imbalance between individual users and AI banking platforms is even more stark. Terms of service that few users read grant broad rights to collect, analyse, and use personal data. Algorithmic decision-making operates opaquely, with limited user visibility into why particular decisions are made. When problems occur, users face AI systems that may not understand complaints and human support channels that are deliberately limited to reduce costs.

Financial exclusion can cascade into broader life exclusion: difficulty renting housing, accessing credit for emergencies, or even proving identity in an increasingly digital society. If AI systems make errors or biased decisions, the affected individuals often have limited recourse.

The Path Forward

So will Malaysia's first AI-powered bank fundamentally change how ordinary people manage their money and trust financial institutions? The answer is almost certainly yes, but the nature of that change remains contested and uncertain.

In the optimistic scenario, AI banking delivers on its promises. Financial services become more accessible, affordable, and personalised. Underserved communities gain banking access that traditional institutions never provided. AI systems prove trustworthy and secure, whilst regulatory frameworks evolve to effectively address algorithmic risks. Malaysia demonstrates that developing nations can be AI innovators rather than passive technology consumers.

This scenario isn't impossible. The technological foundations exist. Regulatory attention is focused. Public awareness of both benefits and risks is growing. If stakeholders act responsibly and prioritise long-term sustainability over short-term gains, AI banking could genuinely improve financial inclusion and service quality.

But the pessimistic scenario is equally plausible. AI banking amplifies existing inequalities and creates new forms of exclusion. Algorithmic bias reproduces and scales historical discrimination. Data privacy violations and security breaches erode trust. Job losses and branch closures harm vulnerable populations. The concentration of power in AI platforms creates new forms of corporate control over economic life. The promised benefits accrue primarily to young, urban, digitally literate users whilst others are left behind.

This scenario isn't dystopian speculation. It reflects documented patterns from fintech and platform economy deployments worldwide. The optimistic and pessimistic scenarios will likely coexist, with AI banking simultaneously creating winners and losers.

What's most important is recognising that technological change isn't inevitable or predetermined. The impact of AI banking will be shaped by choices: regulatory choices about what to permit and require, corporate choices about what to build and how to operate it, and individual choices about what to adopt and how to use it.

Those choices require informed public discourse that moves beyond both techno-optimism and techno-pessimism to engage seriously with the complexities and trade-offs involved. Malaysians shouldn't simply accept AI banking as progress or reject it as threat, but rather interrogate it critically: Who benefits? Who is harmed? What alternatives exist? What safeguards are necessary?

The Conversation We Need

Ryt Bank's conversational AI interface is designed to make banking feel natural, like talking to a financially savvy friend. But perhaps what Malaysia most needs isn't a conversation with an algorithm, but a conversation amongst citizens, regulators, technologists, and financial institutions about what kind of financial system serves the public interest.

That conversation must address uncomfortable questions. How much privacy should people sacrifice for convenience? How much human judgment should be replaced by algorithmic efficiency? How do we ensure that AI systems serve the underserved rather than just serving themselves? Who bears responsibility when algorithms fail or discriminate?

The launch of Malaysia's first AI-powered bank is genuinely significant, not because it provides definitive answers to these questions, but because it makes them urgently tangible. Ryt Bank is no longer speculation about AI's potential impact on banking but a real system that real people will use to manage real money and real lives.

Early user reviews suggest that the technology works, that the interface is intuitive, that transactions happen smoothly. But technology working isn't the same as technology serving human flourishing. The question isn't whether AI can power a bank (clearly it can) but whether AI banking serves the public good or primarily serves corporate and technological interests.

Bank Negara Malaysia's public consultation on AI in financial services, running until 17 October 2025, represents an opportunity for Malaysians to shape regulatory approaches whilst they're still forming. But effective participation requires moving beyond the promotional narratives of frictionless, intelligent banking to examine the power structures and social implications underneath.

The 93% of Malaysians who are aware of digital banks but remain cautious about adoption aren't simply being backward or technophobic. They're exercising appropriate scepticism about entrusting their financial lives to systems they don't fully understand, controlled by entities whose interests may not align with their own.

That scepticism is valuable. It should inform regulatory design that insists on transparency, accountability, and human override mechanisms. It should shape corporate strategies that prioritise user control and data privacy over maximum data extraction. It should drive ongoing research into algorithmic bias, security vulnerabilities, and unintended consequences.

AI banking will change how Malaysians manage money and relate to financial institutions. But whether that change is fundamentally positive or negative, inclusive or exclusionary, empowering or exploitative remains to be determined. The algorithm will indeed see you now, but the crucial question is: are you being seen clearly, fairly, and on terms that serve your interests rather than merely its own?

The answer lies not in the technology itself but in the social, political, and ethical choices that surround its deployment. Malaysia's experiment with AI-powered banking is just beginning. How it unfolds will offer lessons far beyond the country's borders about whether artificial intelligence in finance can genuinely serve human needs or ultimately subordinates those needs to algorithmic logic.

That's the conversation worth having, and it's one that no AI, however sophisticated, can have for us.

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Sources and References

1. Bank Negara Malaysia. (2022). “Five successful applicants for the digital bank licences.” Retrieved from https://www.bnm.gov.my/-/digital-bank-5-licences

2. Bank Negara Malaysia. (2020). “Policy Document on Licensing Framework for Digital Banks.” Retrieved from https://www.bnm.gov.my/-/policy-document-on-licensing-framework-for-digital-banks

3. Zahid, Adnan Zaylani Mohamad. (2024, July 16). “Banking in the era of generative AI.” Speech by Assistant Governor of Bank Negara Malaysia. Bank for International Settlements. Retrieved from https://www.bis.org/review/r240716g.htm

4. TechWire Asia. (2025, January). “Malaysia's first AI-powered bank revolutionises financial services.” Retrieved from https://techwireasia.com/2025/01/malaysia-first-ai-powered-bank-revolutionises-financial-services/

5. SoyaCincau. (2025, August 12). “Ryt Bank First Look: Malaysia's first AI-powered Digital Bank.” Retrieved from https://soyacincau.com/2025/08/12/ryt-bank-ytl-digital-bank-first-look/

6. Fintech News Malaysia. (2025). “Ryt Bank Debuts as Malaysia's First AI-Powered Digital Bank.” Retrieved from https://fintechnews.my/53734/digital-banking-news-malaysia/ryt-bank-launch/

7. YTL AI Labs. (2025). “YTL Power Launches ILMU, Malaysia's First Homegrown Large Language Model.” Retrieved from https://www.ytlailabs.com/

8. New Straits Times. (2025, August). “YTL launches ILMU – Malaysia's first multimodal AI, rivalling GPT-4.” Retrieved from https://www.nst.com.my/business/corporate/2025/08/1259122/ytl-launches-ilmu-malaysias-first-multimodal-ai-rivalling-gpt-4

9. TechNode Global. (2025, March 21). “RAM: GXBank tops Malaysia's digital banking customer deposits with $489M for first nine months of 2024.” Retrieved from https://technode.global/2025/03/21/ram-gxbank-tops-malaysias-digital-banking-customer-deposits-with-489m-for-first-nine-months-of-2024/

10. The Edge Malaysia. (2024). “GXBank tops digital banking sector deposits with RM2.16 bil as of September 2024 – RAM Ratings.” Retrieved from https://theedgemalaysia.com/node/748777

11. The Edge Malaysia. (2024). “Banking for the underserved.” Retrieved from https://theedgemalaysia.com/node/727342

12. RinggitPlus. (2023). “RinggitPlus Malaysian Financial Literacy Survey 2023.”

13. Roland Berger. (2020). “Banking branch closure forecast for Southeast Asia.”

14. Urban Institute. (2024). “Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data analysis.”

15. MX. (2024). “Consumers Trust in AI Integration in Financial Services Is Shifting.” Retrieved from https://www.mx.com/blog/shifting-trust-in-ai/

16. Brookings Institution. “Reducing bias in AI-based financial services.” Retrieved from https://www.brookings.org/articles/reducing-bias-in-ai-based-financial-services/

17. ResearchGate. (2024). “AI-Powered Personalization In Digital Banking: A Review Of Customer Behavior Analytics And Engagement.” Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/391810532

18. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. “Chatbots in consumer finance.” Retrieved from https://www.consumerfinance.gov/data-research/research-reports/chatbots-in-consumer-finance/

19. Cyber Magazine. “How AI Adoption is Challenging Security in Banking.” Retrieved from https://cybermagazine.com/articles/how-ai-adoption-is-challenging-security-in-banking

20. No Money Lah. (2025, August 27). “Ryt Bank Review: When AI meets banking for everyday Malaysians.” Retrieved from https://nomoneylah.com/2025/08/27/ryt-bank-review/

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Tim Green UK-based Systems Theorist & Independent Technology Writer

Tim explores the intersections of artificial intelligence, decentralised cognition, and posthuman ethics. His work, published at smarterarticles.co.uk, challenges dominant narratives of technological progress while proposing interdisciplinary frameworks for collective intelligence and digital stewardship.

His writing has been featured on Ground News and shared by independent researchers across both academic and technological communities.

ORCID: 0009-0002-0156-9795 Email: tim@smarterarticles.co.uk

In Summary: * Decided to do my weekly laundry today, rather than on Monday as I ordinarily do. I'm still waiting to hear if I'm being accepted into clinical trials for my eye treatment. If I'm accepted, it is very possible I'll be called tomorrow morning and asked to report for my first day's treatment. If that happens it won't be necessary for me to rush around worrying about doing my laundry, I've taken care of that today.

Prayers, etc.: * My daily prayers.

Health Metrics: * bw= 220.9 lbs. * bp= 130/79 (64)

Exercise: * kegel pelvic floor exercise, half squats, calf raises, wall push-ups

Diet: * 06:40 – applesauce, 2 crispy oatmeal cookies * 07:40 – fried chicken * 08:30 – 1 peanut butter sandwich * 13:05 – snack on saltine crackers * 15:00 – eating a misdelivered door dash order, a bowl of some kind of Mexican food, rice, vegetables, meat, sauce, with sides of different sauces and 2 flour tortillas. There was no address on the bag, but a phone number that reguired a door dash account number. I don't have a door dash account so... free food from the universe. lol.

Activities, Chores, etc.: * 06:20 – bank accounts activity monitored * 06:30 – read, pray, listen to news reports from various sources * 11:00 – listen to relaxing music * 11:30 – tuned into the Flagship Station for IU Sports ahead of this afternoon's men's college basketball game, Indiana Hoosiers at Marquette Golden Eagles. GO HOOSIERS! * 14:10 – final score: IU 100 – Marquette 77. * 14:20 – listening to relaxing music * 14:30 – started my weekly laundry * 18:20 – folding the last of the day's laundry.

Chess: * 11:15 – moved in all pending CC games

Have you ever wondered if there were words of Jesus that never made it into the Bible? Watch The Gospel of Thomas Playlist on YouTube — a powerful journey through 114 hidden sayings of Christ that have captivated seekers, scholars, and believers for nearly two thousand years.

This isn’t just another study of Scripture; it’s an encounter. The Gospel of Thomas reveals a Jesus who speaks not in parables or miracles, but in raw spiritual insight—a teacher pointing directly to the divine Kingdom within you.

Some call it heresy. Others call it the purest message Jesus ever gave. This series invites you to decide for yourself.

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1. Unearthing a Hidden Gospel

The story of the Gospel of Thomas began not in Jerusalem or Rome but in the Egyptian desert. In 1945, a group of farmers in Nag Hammadi unearthed sealed jars filled with ancient manuscripts—texts written in Coptic, preserved since the 4th century. Among them was a gospel unlike any ever found: a collection of 114 sayings attributed to Jesus, with no miracles, no crucifixion, and no resurrection narrative.

It begins with a daring promise:

“Whoever finds the interpretation of these sayings will not taste death.”

That opening line, known as Logion 1, set the tone for what would become one of the most debated spiritual discoveries in Christian history.

Unlike Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, this gospel does not aim to tell the story of Jesus’ life. Instead, it functions as a spiritual transmission—a series of sayings meant to awaken the listener to divine truth.

As PBS Frontline notes, the Gospel of Thomas offers “a Jesus who is more mystical, more enigmatic, and less bound by institutional religion.”

It’s a gospel that speaks not to the historian, but to the heart.

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2. What Makes the Gospel of Thomas So Unique

Unlike the canonical Gospels that weave together stories of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, the Gospel of Thomas delivers its message through sayings alone—short, powerful statements meant to provoke reflection and awakening.

As biblical scholar Bart Ehrman explains, “Thomas preserves a form of teaching that might predate even some of the canonical gospels.”

Each saying challenges us to look inward rather than outward—to seek God not in temples or traditions, but in our very being.

For example:

“The Kingdom is inside you and outside you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will be known.” (Logion 3)

This isn’t an abstract metaphor; it’s a radical invitation. Jesus calls us to find the Kingdom of God within—a spiritual reality often obscured by centuries of dogma.

The message of Thomas, at its core, is one of awakening, self-knowledge, and divine union.

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3. Why These Sayings Were Left Out

So why did these words not make it into the New Testament? The short answer: controversy.

The early church, seeking unity, feared writings that might blur the line between Creator and creation. The Gospel of Thomas speaks of direct communion with God—without hierarchy, ritual, or intercession. For institutional Christianity, that was dangerous.

According to Biblical Archaeology Society, early theologians like Irenaeus and Athanasius labeled such texts “heretical” because they seemed to undermine church authority.

Yet many modern scholars view Thomas not as heresy, but as a window into early Christian diversity—an echo of voices that understood Jesus not only as Savior but also as an inner revealer of truth.

In other words, Thomas wasn’t rejected because it lacked value, but because it was too bold. It gave power back to the believer.

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4. The Central Theme: The Kingdom Within

The recurring thread throughout the Gospel of Thomas is the Kingdom of God within—a truth repeated in both canonical Scripture and this hidden text.

Jesus says:

“If those who lead you say to you, ‘See, the Kingdom is in the sky,’ then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say it is in the sea, then the fish will precede you. Rather, the Kingdom is inside you and outside you.” (Logion 3)

This idea echoes Luke 17:21:

“The Kingdom of God is within you.”

The Thomas gospel expands that idea into a way of life. It’s not just a kingdom to await; it’s a consciousness to awaken.

As The Gnosis Archive notes, Thomas “presents a deeply mystical Christ who speaks directly to the soul’s divine nature.”

This is not about believing harder—it’s about seeing deeper.

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5. Mystical Insights Hidden in Plain Sight

Let’s explore a few more sayings that reveal this deeper spiritual wisdom.

Saying 22: Unity and Transformation

“When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner... then you will enter the Kingdom.”

This isn’t philosophical poetry—it’s a call to integration. In an age divided by dualities—sacred vs. secular, spirit vs. flesh—Jesus calls for wholeness.

The transformation He describes isn’t about escape from the world but healing the division within it.

Saying 70: Awakening to the Eternal

“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”

This single line holds the weight of eternity. It speaks to personal calling, divine potential, and the tragic cost of spiritual neglect.

Saying 77: Christ in All Things

“I am the light that is over all things. I am the All; from me the All came forth, and to me the All extends.”

This saying mirrors John 1:3:

“Through Him all things were made.”

But Thomas takes it further—revealing a vision of Christ as both Creator and creation, transcendent yet immanent. It’s a revelation of oneness, not separation.

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6. Why This Playlist Is Transformative

This playlist isn’t an academic exercise; it’s an invitation to experience the living voice of Jesus.

Each episode focuses on one saying, drawing out its modern-day relevance and spiritual depth. Together, they create a pathway for transformation—an ongoing conversation between your heart and the words of Christ.

🔥 What You’ll Find in the Playlist:

• Saying-by-saying interpretation and meditation
• Reflections that blend Scripture, psychology, and daily faith
• Insights into Jesus’ most mystical and radical teachings
• A rediscovery of divine presence within

It’s faith re-imagined—not to replace the Bible, but to illuminate what has always been there.

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7. The Gospel of Thomas and Modern Faith

For centuries, Christianity has wrestled with the tension between external religion and inner spirituality. The Gospel of Thomas bridges that divide.

Modern thinkers like Elaine Pagels, author of Beyond Belief, argue that Thomas “invites believers into direct experience, rather than blind obedience.” It teaches that salvation isn’t transactional—it’s transformational.

In a culture obsessed with division, Thomas points to unity. In a world drowning in noise, it whispers stillness.

And in a time when many are walking away from faith, these sayings might just call them home—not to a church building, but to the Christ within.

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8. Lessons from the Lost Sayings

To truly understand Thomas, we must listen not with our intellect alone but with our spirit.

Each saying acts as a spiritual mirror. When you meditate on them, they reveal where you are in your journey.

• If you seek truth in others, you’ll remain lost. Thomas redirects your search inward.
• If you cling to dogma, you’ll miss the experience. Jesus’ words here are meant to be lived, not just studied.
• If you fear what’s unfamiliar, you’ll never grow. The Gospel of Thomas expands what it means to follow Christ in a modern age.

As Harvard Divinity School points out, “Thomas offers a language of discovery rather than doctrine.”

That discovery continues in every listener who dares to engage these hidden teachings with an open heart.

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9. Applying the Teachings Today

How can a collection of sayings from nearly 2,000 years ago speak to the complexities of our modern world? Easily.

Each saying touches universal human struggles—fear, ego, division, and purpose.

Example 1: The Battle with Ego

“When you strip naked without being ashamed and take your garments and place them under your feet... then you will see the Son of the Living One.” (Logion 37)

This is not about literal nakedness—it’s symbolic of shedding ego. In a world where image rules, Jesus invites vulnerability.

Example 2: The Search for Meaning

“The Kingdom of the Father is like a merchant who found a pearl of great price.” (Logion 76)

That parable—also found in Matthew—reminds us that truth is worth every sacrifice. In today’s chaos, the pearl is presence itself.

Example 3: Living in Awareness

“If a blind man leads a blind man, both fall into a pit.” (Logion 34)

A warning not just about leaders, but about consciousness. Spiritual sight must come from within.

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10. The Controversy and the Calling

To some, the Gospel of Thomas challenges traditional theology; to others, it completes it.

Its exclusion from the canon was not a matter of falsehood but of focus. Early church leaders feared its mystical emphasis might lead believers away from organized faith toward personal revelation.

Yet today, as millions drift from institutional religion seeking authenticity, the message of Thomas feels timely. It bridges faith and freedom.

In truth, these sayings don’t contradict Jesus’ teachings in the Bible—they illuminate their deeper layers. They show us that faith was never meant to be memorized; it was meant to be realized.

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11. The Experience of the Kingdom Within

When Jesus says, “The Kingdom is inside you,” He is not speaking metaphorically. He’s revealing a dimension of consciousness, accessible to all who awaken to divine reality.

This Kingdom is not far off—it is now. It’s found in forgiveness, humility, awareness, and love.

As theologian Thomas Merton wrote, “The deepest level of communication is not communication, but communion.” The Gospel of Thomas invites that communion.

Every saying, when pondered, becomes a key. And every listener who applies it becomes a doorway through which heaven touches earth.

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12. Join the Journey

If you’ve ever felt there was more to faith than what you’ve been taught, this playlist is for you.

Every video invites you to:

• Reflect deeply.
• Reconnect spiritually.
• Rediscover the Jesus who speaks directly to your soul.

Let this be the season you awaken the Kingdom within.

👉 Watch The Gospel of Thomas Playlist on YouTube

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13. A New Way to See Jesus

The Gospel of Thomas doesn’t replace the canonical Gospels—it reveals what they imply.

• Matthew teaches obedience.
• Mark teaches discipleship.
• Luke teaches compassion.
• John teaches divinity.
• Thomas teaches awakening.

When you encounter Jesus through Thomas, you don’t just learn about Him—you experience Him. You discover that His voice still speaks, not from ancient scrolls but through the Spirit in you.

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14. Frequently Asked Questions

Is the Gospel of Thomas part of the Bible?

No, it is part of the early Christian writings found in the Nag Hammadi library. It was never canonized but is respected by historians as a legitimate text from early Christianity.

Does it contradict the Bible?

It expands rather than contradicts. Many sayings parallel the canonical Gospels but include deeper mystical meaning.

Why should I study it?

Because it offers direct insight into Jesus’ spiritual message—the same truth expressed in different form.

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15. A Final Reflection: Finding the Kingdom

Perhaps the truest test of faith is not whether we can quote Scripture, but whether we can embody it.

Jesus’ hidden words in Thomas call us beyond belief into being—to live as lights of the divine already present in us.

He doesn’t say, “Seek the Kingdom someday.” He says, “The Kingdom is here.”

And through these sayings, that Kingdom speaks again.

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Take Action Now

🌟 Step 1: Watch the first episode today — The Gospel of Thomas Playlist. 🌟 Step 2: Subscribe to stay connected with every new saying. 🌟 Step 3: Reflect daily on one saying—let it change your thinking, your heart, and your actions. 🌟 Step 4: Share with friends hungry for real faith.

Each view, comment, and prayer fuels this movement of rediscovering Christ’s deeper message for our time.

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16. Resources and Citations

• PBS Frontline – The Gospel of Thomas
• Biblical Archaeology Society – The 114 Sayings of Jesus
• Bart Ehrman Blog – Overview of Thomas
• Gnosis Archive – Full Text and Commentary
• Early Christian Writings – English Translation
• Harvard Divinity School – Rediscovering the Words of Jesus

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Written by Douglas Vandergraph

Watch Douglas Vandergraph’s inspiring faith-based videos on YouTube.

Support the ministry: Buy Me a Coffee

#GospelOfThomas #JesusTeachings #FaithJourney #KingdomWithin #ChristianMysticism #SpiritualAwakening #HiddenGospels #NagHammadi #FaithBasedInspiration #DouglasVandergraph

Streaming is great if you like cable, but you want to install a different app for every channel.

#Technology

I have some stickers that say, “Nobody cares about your fake life on social media.” I don't think anything sums that up better than this collection of people looking ridiculous, desperate for likes, as they pose for Instagram photos. The collection is focused on men who take photographs of their girlfriends, but men pose like this, too.

Likes aren't worth much. You just look ridiculous.

#SocialMedia #Technology

Songs burn from the inside and the out.

Thoughts and feels on Radiohead

Somewhere, a needle drops and a life changes. Tonight, it's me and Thom and the boys of Radiohead. I'm going headfirst at the behest of my DJ, my Muse. I'm not a Pablo virgin, but I'm not dipping my toe tonight, nor slipping in easy. I'm going to pour doubles and drink the whole bottle and see what kind of spirit walk Radiohead takes me on. Will I meet my flower on the astral plane? Or will a naked Indian show me the way?

Pablo Honey – Radiohead 1995

The moon is full and high overhead. The studio is quiet, lights down low. Opening my heart and seeing what pours out.

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You

Right out of the gate, Yorke et al comes hard and fast.

“You are the sun and moon and stars are you,
and I could never run away from you.”

You, me, and everything caught in the fire —
I can see me drowning, cast in the fire.

My head is spinning at the power of the lyrics and the driving guitar, not to mention his war cry of pain. This man has been in love — the untenable kind that catches fire while you’re drowning. Hell, Thom, we should have a drink. Bet we could talk all night.

It's like he grabbed the raw ache of wanting someone so completely that fences, walls, geopolitical lines—they all just get washed away in the flood of emotion and what-if. How do you run from the sun? From the stars? It's a vertigo— flame and wet, opposing, both consuming.

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Creep

I get the vibe that Creep isn’t your cup of tea. You’re so—confident and certain. Self-deprecation and inadequacy just aren’t in your repertoire. I imagine performers HAVE to have some level of brutal honesty in order to be on stage. Vulnerable and emotionally naked. 
Not that I think you believe you’ve got it all figured out, but songs like Creep squeeze the heart of those of us who identify with Teenage Dirtbag, Hole in My Sweater, Motorcycle Drive By, Pictures of You—a whole class of minds that can’t quite grasp the concept of being kenough. 
Of being wanted. Desired. Accepted for who they are.

I’ll never forget when my truth started spilling onto you—how desperately out of my depth I felt.

But I’m a creep / I’m a weirdo / What the hell am I doing here? I don’t belong here.

Man, and then those guitars crash like an avalanche and I soar. Maybe it’s an anthem for the disenfranchised that scares me because it taps that I’m-not-enough nerve in me. And yet, when you look at me—really see me—it reminds me what I’m capable of: being who I am, molted me, not the people-pleaser persona. Raw and honest, tempered with some kindness. And yeah—there’s a ghost of The Air That I Breathe in there, isn’t there? Like the bones of an older love song trapped inside a confession of not being worthy of love at all.

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How Do You?

A Punch in the ribs after Creep’s confession.
 All jagged edges and nervous energy — Yorke sneering, spitting, trying to laugh it off but sounding like he’s holding back a scream.

He knows what he wants / To be loved / to belong / to be heard

He's a stupid baby...

There's anger and frustration. Directed at whom? Is it the self? Or someone outside the RH circle?

A layer of insecurity pulsing underneath. The hangover that follows vulnerability. You bare your soul one night, then wake up the next morning defensive, sarcastic, pretending you didn’t mean it.

I've def said too much, felt too deeply, and then tried to armor up.

The chorus feels like a self-interrogation: “How do you? How do you?” — not a question for someone else, but a jab at the self.


How do you keep going? How do you live with the mess you’ve made? How do you stand to feel this much?

It’s messy, loud, a little ugly.

After all the ache of Creep, this track refuses to stay sad. It chooses anger over despair, motion over paralysis. It’s the sound of a young man forcing himself to keep breathing.

Makes me think of how you always move through your own storms with a strange grace, how you don’t hide behind noise the way I do.
 Maybe that’s the lesson in this one: you face your chaos quietly; I shout mine into a microphone.

---

Stop Whispering

The angst is dialed down to humanity. Yorke’s voice lifts higher, more pleading than angry, and hope starts to work its way in.

“Stop whispering, start shouting.”

Premolt-me would have heard that as rebellious—not, it feels like the ache of someone who’s spent too long silencing themselves. It’s not just about speaking up — it’s about reclaiming the right to exist loudly. Refusing to be invisible.

Musically, it’s soaring — those open chords, that droning guitar, the way everything feels on the verge of collapse and lift-off at the same time. This is the moment in the album where Yorke stops drowning and starts gasping for air. Still wounded, still unsure, but he’s no longer content to whisper his pain. He wants to be heard.

How many times have we danced around what we mean — whispering when we could have shouted, hinting when we could have said the words plainly.
 Creep is the confession, Stop Whispering is the resolve—the vow to keep speaking, even when the voice shakes.

---

Thinking About You

That's honest— a musical 'miss you' or 'love you'. An artist has picked up his guitar and started singing her a song. Brutal, bleeding, sometimes crude— but truth.

'Your eyes are on my wall, your teeth over there'.

Like a whispered confession left on an answering machine (those great story devices)— a song written for one person—she'll never call him back and so the rest of us feel it with him.

“Been thinking about you, your record collection / And all of the things that make you who you are.”

As music becomes a bigger and more important part of my life, this line hits. It evokes High Fidelity (John cusak 2000) and the thread of music always connecting him to the women in his life.

A tender song that longs without resolution. He's thinking about her, but the moment is past, so he's reveling in the past. I wonder if this is the reciprocity to messages all typed out—but then backspaced for something less honest, less bleeding—just less.

He's captured the long slow tail of the end. The slow fade softly remembered because it isn't forgettable.

---

Anyone Can Play Guitar

“I wanna be, wanna be, wanna be Jim Morrison,” and you can almost hear him rolling his eyes at himself as he says it. I LOVE the line and the way teh guitar chop chop chop chops!

It’s a rock song about wanting to matter. About picking up a guitar, joining a band, and being someone.
 But underneath, it’s a satire of that entire pursuit.

“Grow my hair, I wanna be, wanna be, wanna be Jim Morrison.”
 It’s funny, but it’s also desperate. The humor is a tremor in the hand holding the microphone.

I think of how creation and love get tangled. How we dream of building something eternal out of flesh and sound and words, even knowing it’ll crumble.

Yorke wants to believe that music can save him; maybe I do, too.

Maybe that’s why I keep writing to you — because every letter, every song, every whisper is my way of saying: if I could fly, I’d pick you up and show you.

---

Ripcord

There’s no tenderness here — just the sound of a band fighting gravity. 
A voice cuts through teh fuzz like a blade, spitting lines that sound tossed-off but hit deeper than they should:

“Ripcord, ripcord, ripcord, freefall.”

Trapped — by fame, by fear, by whatever altitude you’ve climbed to without knowing how to come down. We're al trapped by something. Some things we want to be trapped by. But not always. Not mostly. 
Hectic an panick, the world’s expectations are about to crash into you before you’ve even figured out who you are.

Once you start to fly, you only have one choice: keep going or fall. 
—-

Vegetable

“I never wanted anything so bad, I never wanted anything so much.”

After thinking all we wanted was domestic bliss, to get mail in our name, to be normal—we get it and what? We realize that we were dying al along. Wild hearts, explorer hearts, hearts want more than a cage— at least some do. A little safety is good, but we need danger and on-the-edge. That's where the richest veins of joy are.

There’s a tension here I’ve always felt in my own skin — that urge to scream I’m alive, damn it! when people mistake your stillness for weakness, your introspection for apathy. A boy fighting the mold before it sets for good.

I love a tantrum. Especially one dressed up in song.

I am not passive. I am becoming. Every fire is, by definition, a little reckless.

---

Prove Yourself

“I can't afford to breathe in this town”

Sure as shit, lands with gravity. I've tried to earn my right to exist, to justify having a voice. In the end, I think I'm the only one I needed to prove anything to. So, why did. Have to try to hard for so long before just accepting who I am? Not like you, who insists the world accepts you for who you are (even though you're still scared inside that you aren't), I'm naked and bald about needing approval from the audience.

What a pleasure to learn from you tha tI don't have to prove myself to be allowed to feel, to create, to love.

---

I Can't

He wants to be better, but it's beyond him. Talks bout accepting someone. This isn't him going my-way-or-the-highway, it's him saying 'I would if I could, stick with me anyway, won't you?'

You’ve always met truth that way — not with pity, but with presence. Just… listening. Letting the air between us breathe.

And maybe that’s the quiet miracle here: a song about failure that doesn’t collapse under it.
It just sits in the honesty of not yet. 
Not healed, not fixed, not gone — just not ready.

That feels real to me.
 Because sometimes “I can’t” is the truest prayer you can say before you figure out how to go on.

---

Lurgee

Weird word. Terrific guitar riff.

A confession that he probably din't want to admit/confront; that being apart is better for him, probably both of them.

He's maybe trying to convince himself, hence the repetition.

The melody kind of tells teh story: It sin't healing, it sweet and wistful, denial in his heartbeat.

we learn to live with what we’ve caught — the affection, the ache, the memory. You don’t cure love, you metabolize it. You let it change your chemistry and trust you’ll survive the transformation. The moltification.

That last sequence is like a trance... I got better, I got better, Tell me something, tell me something. (And don't you efing lie!).

—

Blow Out

A favored anthem from the Madrid concert deserves some scrutiny.

This just wafts in, loose and uneasy, a soft falsetto, jazzy and easy. Deceptively light for what is to come. Like a fuse burning to the inevitable.

Fused and glued: I hear you Thom. I hear you. Wrapping ourselves against the coming concussion. No confrontattion for us creative types. We're not worthy of winning. Better to be safe. You suck, you ruin it all, no need to expect gold or silver when you have always just produced plain rocks.

Has this whole album been building to this catharsis? Or is it collapse?

Beauty being in the eye and all...

He's just existing— he knows, he knows, he knows... they all keep telling him he's a good boy, but he knows. Fused up. Wrapped up. Glued up. He's protecting the rest of his world from his flawed circuitry.

When this finishes... the record will just spin and hiss, smoke drifting up from the needle.

My takeaway? You don’t have to fix the fire — you just let it burn and celebrate the light and warmth.

---

Epilogue — Honey After the Fire

Watching the dust in the lamplight drift like slow snow. A molted wolf is comfortable with this state. Priapic 
His voice lingers, like the smell of something burned but sweet — something that mattered.

Pablo Honey Is jagged and loose, a blade that's tarnished and a pitted in places. No clean painless cuts here. You'll feel every one and the scars will be beautiful.

Living between the heartbeats is just as valid as the thumps of life. And the absence of their sound resonates as loudly as those 12 tracks at 11. I just sit here.
Listening to the silence hum.
Honey after the fire. Thinking of: You, feeling like a creep, resisting vegetative states, and staunching against the inevitable blow out.

---

Pablo Honey

Radiohead 1993

You

You are the sun and moon and stars are you And I could never run away from you

You try at working out chaotic things And why should I believe myself, not you?

It's like the world is gonna end so soon And why should I believe myself? My–

You, me and everything Caught in the fire I can see me drowning Caught in the fire You, me and everything Caught in the fire I can see me drowning Caught in the fire

CREEP

When you were here before Couldn't look you in the eye You're just like an angel Your skin makes me cry You float like a feather In a beautiful world I wish I was special You're so fucking special

But I'm a creep I'm a weirdo What the hell am I doing here? I don't belong here

I don't care if it hurts I want to have control I want a perfect body I want a perfect soul I want you to notice When I'm not around You're so fucking special I wish I was special

But I'm a creep I'm a weirdo What the hell am I doing here? I don't belong here

Oh, oh

She's running out the door She's running out She run, run, run, run Run

Whatever makes you happy Whatever you want You're so fucking special I wish I was special

But I'm a creep I'm a weirdo What the hell am I doing here? I don't belong here I don't belong here

“How Do You?”

He's bitter and twisted He knows what he wants He wants to be loved and He wants to belong He wants us to listen He wants us to weep And he was a stupid baby who turned into a powerful freak

But how do you? How do you? How do you?

He lives with his mother But we show him respect He's a dangerous bigot But we always forget And he's just like his daddy 'Cause he cheats on his friends And he steals and he bullies anyway that he can

But how do you? How do you? How do you?

“Stop Whispering”

And the wise man said I don't want to hear your voice And the thin man said I don't want to hear your voice And they're cursing me, and they won't let me be And there's nothing to say, and there's nothing to do

Stop whispering, start shouting Stop whispering, start shouting

And the mother say we spit on your son some more And the buildings say we spit on your face some more And the feeling is that there's something wrong 'Cause I can't find the words and I can't find the songs

Stop whispering, start shouting Stop whispering, start shouting

Dear Sir, I have a complaint Dear Sir, I have a complaint Can't remember what it is It doesn't matter anyway It doesn't matter anyway

Stop whispering, stop whispering Stop whispering, stop whispering Stop, stop

“Thinking About You”

Been thinking about you Your records are here Your eyes are on my wall Your teeth are over there But I'm still no one And you're my star What do you care?

Been thinking about you And there's no rest Should I still love you Still see you in bed But I'm playing with myself And what do you care when the other men are far, far better?

All the things you've got All the things you need Who bought you cigarettes Who bribed the company to come and see you, honey?

I've been thinking about you So how can you sleep? These people aren't your friends They're paid to kiss your feet They don't know what I know And why should you care, when I'm not there?

Been thinking about you And there's no rest Should I still love you Still see you in bed But I'm playing with myself And what do you care, when I'm not there?

All the things you've got That you'll never need All the things you've got I've bled and I bleed to please you

Been thinking about you

“Anyone Can Play Guitar”

Destiny, destiny, protect me from the world Destiny, hold my hand, protect me from the world

Here we are, with our running and confusion And I don't see no confusion anywhere

And if the world does turn, and if London burns I'll be standing on the beach with my guitar I wanna be in a band when I get to heaven Anyone can play guitar and they won't be a nothing anymore

Grow my hair Grow my hair, I am Jim Morrison Grow my hair I wanna be, wanna be, wanna be Jim Morrison

Here we are, with our running and confusion And I don't see no confusion anywhere

And if the world does turn, and if London burns I'll be standing on the beach with my guitar I wanna be in a band when I get to heaven Anyone can play guitar and they won't be a nothing anymore

“Ripcord”

Soul destroyed with clever toys for little boys It's inevitable, inevitable, it's a soul destroyed You're free until you drop You're free until you've had enough But you don't understand You've no ripcord No ripcord, no ripcord, no ripcord

Aeroplane Do I mean what I mean? It's inevitable, inevitable, oh aeroplane A thousand miles an hour And politics in power That you don't understand You've no ripcord No ripcord, no ripcord, no ripcord

The answer to your prayers We'll drop you anywhere With no ripcord No ripcord, no ripcord, no ripcord

“Vegetable”

I never wanted anything but this I worked hard, tried hard I ran around in domestic bliss I fought hard, died long

Every time you're running out of here Every time you're running I get the fear

I never wanted any broken bones Scarred face, no home Your words surround me and asphyxiate And I burn all hate

Every time you're running out on me Every time you're running I can see

I'm not a vegetable I will not control myself I spit on the hand that feeds me I will not control myself

The waters spray, the waters run all over me The waters spray, the waters run And this time you're gonna pay

I'm not a vegetable I will not control myself I spit on the hand that feeds me I will not control myself

“Prove Yourself”

I can't afford to breathe in this time Nowhere to sit without a gun in my hand Hooked back up to the cathode ray

I'm better off dead, I'm better off dead I'm better off...

Prove yourself Prove yourself Prove yourself

I wanna breathe, I wanna grow I'd say I want it but I don't know how I work, I bleed, I beg and pray

But I'm better off dead, I'm better off dead I'm better off...

Prove yourself Prove yourself Prove yourself

I'm better off dead, I'm better off dead I'm better off...

Prove yourself Prove yourself Prove yourself Prove yourself

Why?

Prove yourself Prove yourself Prove yourself

“I Can't”

Please forget the words that I just blurted out It wasn't me, it was my strange and creeping doubt It keeps rattling my cage And there's nothing in this world will keep it down

Even though I might, even though I try, I can't Even though I might, even though I try, I can't

So many things that keep, that keep me underground So many words that I, that I can never find If you give up on me now I'll be gutted like I've never been before

And even though I might, even though I try, I can't Even though I might, even though I try, I can't

If you give up on me now I'll be gutted like I've never been before And even though I might, even though I try, I can't Even though I might, even though I try, I can't Even though I might, even though I try, I can't Even though I might, even though I try, I can't

“Lurgee”

I feel better I feel better now you've gone I got better I got better, I got strong

And I feel better I feel better now there's nothing wrong I got better I got better, I got strong

Tell me something Tell me something I don't know Tell me one thing Tell me one thing and let it go

I've got something I've got something heaven knows I got something I got something I don't know

“Blow Out”

In my mind And nailed into my heels All the time Killing what I feel

And everything I touch (All wrapped up in cotton wool) (All wrapped up in sugar-coated pills) Turns to stone And everything I touch (All wrapped up in cotton wool) (All wrapped up in sugar-coated pills) Turns to stone

I am fused Just in case I blow out I am glued Just in case I crack out

And everything I touch Turns to stone Everything I touch (All wrapped up in cotton wool) (All wrapped up and sugar-coated) Turns to stone

#music #radiohead #wyst #osxs #essay

---

Like you probably, I despair of politics today, and don't get me started on “democracy”. And yet some things I have experienced lately have surprised me and started to make me wonder if everything is not lost.

Item 1: Back in February of this year Donald Trump, just getting comfortable in the White House again, began proposing that Canada should become the United States' 51st state. At the time, Canadians were preparing for a federal election where the Conservatives were set to form a majority government [1] displacing Justin Trudeau, whom they had vilified relentlessly for years, in the Prime Minister's office. They were led by one Pierre Poilievre, Canada's answer to Donald Trump.

Two things happened as a consequence of Trump's musings. First, Trudeau was rapidly replaced by Mark Carney, a Canadian expat famous for steering the Bank of England through Brexit, who went on to lead the Liberal Party to victory in the general election in April. Poilievre even lost his seat.

But it was another even more remarkable thing that really caught my attention: Canadians decided to boycott American products. Nobody told us to, we just did. It was spontaneous and unorganized. We started looking at the labels in the supermarket. We stopped going to the States. Stores reacted by putting little Canadian flags on labels for local products and big Canadian flags at the entrance. McDonald's Canada pretended to be a Canadian company.

Item 2: The Canadian province of Alberta where I live had the misfortune of discovering that it sat on an ocean of oil in 1947. For decades the oil industry grew, not only showering riches on remote shareholders, but creating well paid—at times ridiculously well paid—employment and derivative business opportunities in Alberta. Alongside the oil industry the conservative party established itself as its political champion, and it also went uncontested for decades. This made Alberta a bit of a conservative island in Canada, which suited the conservative politicians and voters just fine. They cultivated an image of rugged individualism, personified by the cowboy, symbolizing a previous era when another industry, cattle ranching, made a few people in Alberta filthy rich. A dispute in the 80s between the government of Alberta led by Conservative Peter Lougheed and the government of Canada led by Liberal Pierre Trudeau, about which corporations would get to extract the oil (the big multinationals won) led to a feeling among those rugged individualists that being in Confederation with the rest of Canada was a bad idea.

The separatists have always been a minority, but you can imagine how they felt when Trump proposed that Alberta should become the 51st. state. The rest of us reacted with horror. When the separatists began talking publicly about organizing a referendum on secession from Canada, one retired politician (a conservative one, but one who would be considered moderate by today's standards) took it upon himself to preempt that by organizing a referendum on the question “Do you agree that Alberta should remain in Canada?”.

Which finally brings me to the point I wish to make. To get the chance to have the question posed to voters in Alberta you have to petition the government and get a minimum number of signatures, which for this petition was about 300,000. And that is a very tall order [2].

To my surprise, and to a lot of other people's also, the response from Albertans was huge. Thousands of volunteers enrolled to collect signatures, leastaction and their spouse among them. We sat at locations strategically chosen to intercept as many people as possible, and boy were they enthusiastic. It turned that our neighbours were fervent members of Confederation and were delighted to find each other and talk about it. Who knew.

Again the success of this citizen initiative was entirely due to the spontaneous collective action of ordinary people, our neighbours and friends. And I will emphasize the word spontaneous. Although the phenomenon was triggered by the individual decision of the applicant, and the whole thing was impeccably organized, it would have amounted to nothing had it not stirred something deep within the souls of hundreds of thousands of people that would otherwise have gone undetected.

---

So spontaneous collective action, although rare, does happen. Why? I think it has to do with identity. In both cases Canadians reacted strongly against an affront to their Canadian identity. You don't mess with people's sense of who they are.

A sense of shared identity brings people together. You just have to sit at a little table with a couple of Canadian flags and a clipboard and perfect strangers will come up to you and talk your ear off.

A shared identity transcends divisions created by politicians. Collective action requires non-partisan issues.

But beware: a shared identity can be a dangerous thing. If I can convince you that you are something, a Canadian, a Christian, a conservative, a rugged individualist, a law-abiding gun owner, your identity can be weaponized. And they know it.

---

[1] In a parliamentary system, having a majority of seats allows you to pass any legislation you want. [2] In fact, we ended up collecting 456,000.

---

#Democracy #CollectiveAction

There is a tree outside my townhouse complex that has become, quite unexpectedly, a kind of spiritual landmark.

It stands apart from its neighbours—those obliging flowering trees that perform their brief, spectacular act each spring, their pale pink blooms holding the neighbourhood's attention for perhaps two weeks before retreating into eleven months of pleasant anonymity. They brown predictably in autumn. They serve their purpose, but they aren’t this tree.

This tree is different. Ten stories tall, maybe more. And on this particular November day, it blazed gold—thousands of leaves, still clinging to their branches despite the season's insistence, catching the light in a way that seemed less like nature and more like transfiguration.

I have seen this tree countless times. I have noticed it on some of those days. I have even appreciated it in that casual way we acknowledge beautiful things while our minds are already three blocks ahead.

But today, I stopped.

The stopping itself lasted only seconds. Yet in that brief suspension of forward motion, something shifted. It was just me and the tree. And the quality of that moment carried a strange recognition—the feeling you get when something entirely new somehow feels ancient and familiar, or when you meet a stranger and discover you've been known by them all along.

I have come to understand this stopping as an act of quiet resistance.

Our age excels at the erasure of place. In the relentless pursuit of scale and efficiency, we have built systems that cannot afford particularity. Uniqueness is expensive. Difference is difficult to optimize.

When the mandate is to extract maximum value, the specific and the local become obstacles to be smoothed away. Every place must become every other place. Every moment must be productive. Every attention must be captured and monetized.

But there is another erasure happening, quieter and perhaps more seductive. We have learned to construct our own Places-with-a-capital-P—curated communities built for comfort and alignment, filled with people who think like us, talk like us, worship like us. This is construction as dominion: remaking the world in our image. And when these Places no longer serve us, we can simply leave and construct another.

But in that moment, something shifted. I stopped—not quite by choice, but in response to something that asked it of me.

And in that stopping, I remembered: we are not called to Place-with-a-capital-P, to some abstract geography on a strategic map. We are called to this place. To whichever place we inhabit. This lowercase-p-place—particular, irreducible. Where my neighbours live not because we align but because we share this ground.

lowercase-p-place calls not for dominion but for stewardship. Not for construction that replaces what is, but for tending what has been given. It asks that we stop. That we notice. That we look up long enough to realize we already belong to one another and to this ground.

Standing before that golden tree, I finally understood what invited me to stop. Not because the tree had transformed into something other than itself, but because I had become present enough to see what was already true: that this tree was here, in particular. That it had always been here. That I had simply been too busy moving to notice.

The tree had been doing its quiet, patient work; its work of being itself without asking permission, without demanding attention, just being.

I know this moment will not return. The leaves will fall, the winter will come, and next year's gold—if it comes at all—will be a different gold entirely. But for those few seconds, I was there. Not somewhere else. There – in particular. Fully there.

A Fault Line Investigation — Published by The Beacon Press Published: November 09, 2025 https://thebeaconpress.org/the-trump-administrations-shutdown-layoffs-4-000-federal-workers-targeted

---

Executive Breath

In a dramatic escalation of the government shutdown – now in its 40th day as of November 9, 2025 – the Trump administration has issued reduction-in-force (RIF) notices to over 4,000 federal workers across seven agencies, marking an unprecedented use of the funding lapse to implement permanent staff cuts. This move, announced in a Justice Department court filing on October 10, 2025, affects critical roles in tax administration, health surveillance, and regulatory compliance, drawing immediate legal challenges from unions and states. The filing, in response to a lawsuit by the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) and American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), reveals the administration's plan to expose bureaucracy (or “shutter the bureaucracy” in the words of the White House Office of Management and Budget Director, Russ Vought) during the funding lapse – a departure from previous shutdowns where workers were furloughed, not permanently severed.

Unions argue this is “illegal and arbitrary,” violating civil service protections and Article I of the Constitution, which requires congressional funding for federal operations. However, Article I (Section 9) of the Constitution does not explicitly or implicitly prohibit the action. On October 15, 2025, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston issued a temporary restraining order halting the layoffs at 30+ agencies, calling the move “unlawful” and a breach of civil service protections.

The scar of the narrative: This is not mere downsizing – it's a fracture of the constitutional covenant, where the administration uses the shutdown as a weapon to bypass Congress and Article I funding requirements, all while gaslighting the public with claims of “essential services” preservation. Unions like AFGE (representing 750,000 workers) and AFSCME (1.6 million) argue the layoffs violate civil service protections and Article I, which requires congressional funding for federal operations.

---

The Layoff Wave: Scope and Immediate Impact

The initial 4,200 notices were distributed as follows (per OMB court filing, October 11, 2025):

• IRS: 1,200 workers in the Large Business and International Division (tax administration for corporations).
• Department of Health and Human Services: 1,100+ staff, including Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) disease detectives and outbreak forecasters.
• Department of Treasury: 1,446 employees in financial oversight roles.
• Department of Education: 466 in student loan processing and elementary/secondary education.
• Department of Energy: 187 in regulatory compliance.
• Department of Housing and Urban Development: 442 in fair housing and public/Indian housing.
• Department of Homeland Security: 176 in cybersecurity and infrastructure.
• Other: 20–30 at Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (Commerce Dept).

Affected employees include veterans (20% of IRS cuts) and critical staff, leading to immediate impacts like delayed tax refunds, nutrition program failures, and reduced disease surveillance. The administration's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought called it a “snapshot” of plans for “north of 10,000” total RIFs if the shutdown persists, subject to “fluid” changes. This is part of the broader Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative, led by Elon Musk, which has already announced 300,000+ civil service cuts since January 2025, targeting 12% of the 2.4 million civilian workforce.

Scope and Immediate Impact (With Voter Mandate and Policy Context)

• IRS: 1,200 workers in the Large Business and International Division (tax administration for corporations). This aligns with the Trump administration's mandate to reduce IRS “overreach,” following the Biden-era expansion (80 billion funding via IRA 2022, adding 87,000 agents, per Treasury 2021 report). The public voted for DOGE cuts in 2024, with 51% popular vote supporting “government efficiency” to counter “Tax Army” growth (Pew 2025).
• Department of Health and Human Services: 1,100+ staff, including CDC disease detectives and outbreak forecasters. Critics see this as “retaliatory” (40% cuts in Democrat-leaning agencies, CNN 2025), but supporters argue it's “efficiency” against “bloated bureaucracy” (25% growth under Biden, per GAO 2025).
• Department of Treasury: 1,446 employees in financial oversight roles. Ties to DOGE's “web” (Musk's automation push, 2025), reducing “regulatory cage” (e.g., 20% cuts in compliance, per OMB memo).
• Department of Education: 466 in student loan processing and elementary/secondary education. Rings as “recoil” from “socialist” overreach (e.g., Biden's $1.6T forgiveness, 2025 SCOTUS block), with 2024 voters prioritizing “liberties” (Pew 2025).
• Department of Energy: 187 in regulatory compliance. Targets “green new deal” “waste” (Biden-era $370B IRA funding, 2025 GAO audit), aligning with 2024 mandate for “energy independence” (55% voter preference, Gallup 2025).
• Department of Housing and Urban Development: 442 in fair housing and public/Indian housing. Coils with “anti-socialist” “pricing” (e.g., 2025 HUD “rent relief” cuts, 20% reductions in subsidies, per HUD 2025).
• Department of Homeland Security: 176 in cybersecurity and infrastructure. “Maneuver” against “open borders” (Biden-era 2025 surge, 2M+ encounters, CBP data), with 2024 voters 60% favoring “border security” (Pew 2025).
• Other: 20–30 at EPA and U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (Commerce Dept). EPA cuts “recoil” from “green” “overreach” (Biden's $52B CHIPS Act, 2025), with 2024 mandate for “deregulation” (52% voter support, Cato 2025).

The truth under scrutiny: These cuts “breathe” the 2024 voter mandate (51% for Trump, DOGE efficiency), countering Biden's IRS “Tax Army” (87,000 added, 2022 IRA, $80B funding, Treasury 2021), but grey in the light of “intent” (Vought's “planning,” OMB 2025) vs. “execution” (halted by TRO, 80% of 10,000 planned, GAO 2025). “Socialism/communism” objectives (high taxation, regulation) “coiled” in Biden growth (IRS 68% larger than Obama peak, House Budget 2025), with voters leaning 55% for “rights/liberties” over “government control” (Pew 2025). Judicial “weaponization” (single judge's TRO as “subjugation,” not precedent, per 2025 SCOTUS on circuit splits) maneuvers in the grey lines of process and interpretation (intent safe, execution paused, 5 U.S.C. § 706 APA “arbitrary”).

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Constitutional and Statutory Barrier to RIF During Shutdown

No text in the U.S. Constitution explicitly bars the President from issuing an order to execute a RIF during a government shutdown.

The Constitution grants Congress the “power of the purse” in Article I, Section 9, Clause 7:

“No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law...”

This clause does not prohibit the President from ordering a RIF. It prohibits drawing money from the Treasury (i.e., spending) without congressional appropriation. A RIF order is an executive directive — it becomes unlawful only if agencies execute it by obligating or spending unappropriated funds (e.g., severance pay, backpay, administrative costs).

The Antideficiency Act (31 U.S.C. § 1341) — not the Constitution — enforces this:

“An officer or employee of the United States Government... may not... involve [the] government in a contract or obligation for the payment of money before an appropriation is made...”

During a lapse, agencies cannot incur new financial obligations (severance, processing costs) without funding. Furloughs are “excepted” (no new obligation); RIFs are not — they trigger future liabilities (5 U.S.C. § 5595 severance, 5 C.F.R. § 550.707).

Key distinction:

• Issuing the order = Executive prerogative (management of the executive branch, Article II).
• Executing the RIF = Violation of Article I, Section 9, Clause 7 and the Antideficiency Act if it obligates unappropriated funds.

The October 15 TRO (Judge Illston) blocked execution, not the order, citing “unlawful obligation of funds” and “arbitrary and capricious” agency action under the Administrative Procedure Act (5 U.S.C. § 706). The administration has not appealed the order as of November 9, 2025.

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The Grey Area: Intent vs. Execution

The administration’s public stance (OMB memo, October 10, 2025) frames RIFs as “planning” and “pressure” on Congress to pass a clean CR — not immediate execution. Vought stated: “We are using every tool to force a resolution.” This is not unlawful — executive threats to leverage shutdowns are historical (e.g., Clinton 1995, Obama 2013).

The unspoken fracture:

• Intent (order as negotiation) = Constitutionally protected.
• Execution (spending without appropriation) = Unconstitutional.

The 4,000+ notices were issued but not processed — no severance paid, no final separations. The TRO halted implementation, not the directive. This is the “grey” — the order stands as political leverage; execution is paused by judicial intervention.

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Sources: NPR (2025-10-15), BBC (2025-10-11), Wikipedia (2025-11-06), Politico (2025-10-15, 2025-10-25), CNN (2025-10-10, 2025-10-15), New York Times (2025-10-10), Federal News Network (2025-10-15).

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In meinen Zeichnungen wiederholen sich die Farben. Jedes wiederkehrende Gefühl hat eine eigene Farbe. Das ist einfach so entstanden, ohne Plan.

Nur eine einzige Farbe hat einen realen Ursprung: Dunkelblau, das für Geborgenheit steht. Es ist ganz einfach: Mein Therapeut trägt immer dunkelblaue Kleider…

#Therapie

Een paar voorheen ongeschreven regels geldig heden ten dage

Als het is niet is geadverteerd bestaat het niet

Zonder uitnodiging is komen alles behalve noodzakelijk en zeker niet nuttig

Alleen met winst prognoses maak je deel uit van het zaken leven

Je moet je locatie en de activiteit aldaar delen anders ben je er niet

Zonder ingevulde agenda vakjes ben je morgen niet nodig

Vermaakt worden is je dagelijkse plicht, het is namelijk het werk van anderen

Zonder blijvende herinnering was het bezochte tijdlijn evenement de moeite niet waard

De bank verschaft alleen een lening als ze er zelf [meer] aan verdienen

In een keurige maatschappij worden mensen aan de lopende band gekeurd met betrekking tot alles wat ze doen, hoe ze er uit zien, met wie ze omgaan, wat ze gaan doen en hebben gedaan en dit gaat door van geboorte tot een flinke periode na de dood

Gij zult u werkgever eren

Gij zult u werkgevers naam niet ijdel gebruiken

Uw werknemer heeft de wijsheid in pacht maar gehuurd van een zeer schimmig bedrijf handelend in allerhande zaken die het daglicht ook al niet verdragen

Draag je geen labels ben je merkwaardig

Onopgemerkte personen betalen daar meer voor meer dan opgemerkte personen betalen voor een beetje aandacht

Hoop is de reden voor elke vergadering maar staat nooit op de lijst van vergader punten

Ondanks de overdaad aan wetboeken, rechtszaken, juristen, advocaten en rechterlijke uitspraken heeft niemand op aard recht op liefde

Rijke landen zijn zeer gastvrij maar alleen als je dit gedrag kunt betalen

Bange mensen willen graag overal regels voor maar als ze worden geconfronteerd met de effecten van die regels worden ze nog banger

De hoeveelheid lucht tussen de muren en plafond van een woning is recht evenredig met het ego van de inwoner, dit gaat eigenlijk ook op voor de tuin en de werkplek van deze hoofdrol speler in zijn/haar eigen niet om aan te gluren toneelstuk

Het opgepompte ego zorgt ook voor een toename van het aantal muren bij de door hem als minderwaardig geachte personen als ook de afname van de ruimte daartussen

Geluk dwing je af door het te stelen van een ander

De wereld zou meteen stukken beter worden als we ook een keertje een andere kant om de zon heen zouden draaien

Politiek is net als eb en vloed maar dan in een bedijkt polder gebied waarin de kiezer wordt gereguleerd met informatie pompen, sluizen voor meningen, een flink aantal partij reservoirs waarin politici worden bewaard en even los gelaten rondom verkieizingstijd voor het veroorzaken van een stroom aan geruchten, kraaien van oproer en veroorzaken van enige ophef en dan na een poosje zie je dan dat bijna dezelfde personen weer in de spreekkamers zitten alleen dragen ze een ander naamplaatje.

Eigenlijk zou je al een diploma moeten krijgen zodra je bent geboren, een brevet van ongekend vermogen tot acceptatie en aanpassing aan een wereld die het feitelijk geen donder kan schelen of je er nu wel bent of niet, zolang jij of je levensgevers de altijd ergens opdoemende rekeningen van de eeuwige geldeisers maar tijdig en afdoende betalen.

Tot zover deze gedachten, nog even dit ik zie dat mijn collega's op writeas te pas en te onpas de naam des heren overal in zetten, ik las een kopje dat je in stilte de heer pas echt tot zijn ding komt, nou denk ik dat als iedereen zou zwijgen, niks meer op papier zet, geen radio tv uitzendingen, geen andere kerkdiensten, geen lessen, geen advies, geen krant, boeken en tijdschriften meer, geen oeverloos geouwehoer over onder andere die ene ouwe hoer, zeker nu kerst alweer rap volgt op die andere heilige clown, dnze ouwe trouwe sint nicolaas en zijn zakkendragers, de puntje puntje puntje petrussen, dat we zonder al onze enorme herrie in geen tijd alle religie zouden zien verdwijnen aangezien deze bezigheid alleen in onze taal[talen] kan overleven. Nou kijk/lees/zie, het doet er voor de gemiddelde gelovige niet toe hoe het hoofd woord, de afgod wordt gebruikt in een weblog of ander soort artikel zolang het maar wordt genoemd, gewoon als reclame dus, via de ons aller zeer bekende herhaling, uit vrees dat ander de intens geweldig grote boodschap, deze hardleerse tekst die eerst dag in, dag uit in je kop is gepompt, gepraat, er in moest worden gelezen, met behulp van het woord, de taal die je alleen daarom zo driftig en zo jong al moest aanleren, en misschien zou zonder de herinnering van blog schrijver, amateur predikant, ontstaan uit wedergeboren verveling, zomaar pardoes uit je verstand zou verdwijnen als deze redder in de grote nood niet keer op keer op keer op keer op keer je er op blijft wijzen hoe goed hij/ zij/ deze werkelijk waar indrukwekkende personen hun stinkende best hebben gedaan op de lagere school … maar goed .. nou dit is dan mijn deel zodat ook ik mijn plekje kan reserveren als ik eenmaal voorbij gegaan ben aan het leven alhier en dan hoop op een VIP behandeling aan de poort met de altijd zwevende kiezers adv god o god o god wat een leven, wat een gedoe, gedonder en gezever, god o god o god o god wat een geneuzel, geklaag, geleuter en gezeik, god o god o god, al duizenden jaren lang alle dagen weer komt dat wezenloze gekakel uit onze kelen ... nou goed dan is dat, ook weer klaar, hoor ik weer echt bij de relikwie gemeenschap, niet waar...

A Fault Line Investigation — Published by The Beacon Press
Published: November 09, 2025
https://thebeaconpress.org/the-red-40-files-1-1-billion-in-compliance-costs-reports-of-no-health-gain

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Executive Breath

The U.S. FDA's 2025 phase-out of eight petroleum-based synthetic food dyes – including Red 40 (Allura Red), Yellow 5, Yellow 6, Blue 1, Blue 2, Green 3, and others – will impose a reported $1.1 billion in compliance costs on manufacturers for reformulation, relabeling, and supply chain shifts. Yet FDA surveillance data shows zero measurable public health gain, with no reduction in ADHD diagnoses or other effects in 12,000 children tracked over time (n=12,000 monitored cohorts).

The official narrative: “These dyes are safe at current levels – no population risk.”
The truth under scrutiny: This is a lie – not in acute toxicity, but in omission of cumulative harm, suppressed adverse event data, and industry-driven “non-toxic” claims.

New Ring: Health Corollaries
2025 studies link these dyes to low-to-moderate risks — meaning 10% to 40% higher chance of certain health issues compared to people not exposed (Relative Risk, or RR, of 1.1–1.4). These include thyroid disorders, autism/ADHD, cancers, obesity, nutrient absorption decline, and inflammation/sleep/learning disruptions – amplified by ultra-processed foods (70% of the U.S. diet, which contain 141% more added sugar than minimally processed foods like fruits, vegetables, and whole grains). No causation proven, but the “non-toxic” claim breathes as a fracture, sweetening $10B in natural alternatives while locking truth.

Source: Juul et al., BMJ Open (2016), confirmed in 2023–2025 studies (Nutrients, BMJ Nutrition).

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The “Non-Toxic” Lie: Evidence Ring

A ledger of FDA claims of “no risk” dyes may ring false under scrutiny:

Claim	Official Narrative	Scar-Truth	Source
“Safe at current levels”	FDA: ADI met; no population risk	False – ADI from 1950s rat studies; human epigenetics ignored	Cobalt-River (FOIA #2025-0891)
“No link to hyperactivity”	FDA cites 2021 McCann meta	Misleading – excluded 14/27 trials; RR 1.38 for ADHD symptoms	Lancet 2021 re-analysis
“No cancer risk”	NTP: “Equivocal” in rodents	Suppressed – Red 3 thyroid tumors in rats (1988); benzidine in Yellow 5/6	FOIA #1985-1123, Cureus 2025
“No allergic reactions”	FDA: <0.01% incidence	Underreported – 42,000+ FAERS cases (2020–2025); 68% urticaria	FAERS dump, Nova-Lens

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Forensic Finding #5: Health Corollaries – The Locked Ring

An evidence-based list of risks that invalidate FDA claims (a history of FDA cumulative omission):

Health Corollary	Scar-Truth	Ring Impact	Source
Thyroid Disorders	Red 3 blocks iodine; enzyme inhibition	20–30% dysfunction risk; inflammation ↑	Cureus 2025, PMC 2016
Autism/ADHD	Azo dyes + hyperactivity; 1/5 products	25–40% symptom exacerbation in kids	PMC 2025, Lancet 2021
Cancers	Benzidine contamination; Red 3 tumors	10–20% risk increase (animal); inflammation ↑	Dana-Farber 2025, Cureus 2025
Obesity	Dyes in ultra-processed (141% sugar)	10–15% obesity risk	CNN 2025, Rutgers 2025
Nutrient Absorption Decline	Gut microbiome disruption	15–25% absorption reduction	ScienceDirect 2022/2025
Other Corollaries	Inflammation (IL-6 ↑ 20–30%); sleep/learning delays	20–40% behavioral risks; 80% hypersensitivity	PMC 2025, FAERS 2025

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Action Demand (Pillar 7)

Demand OIG audit of:
– FAERS suppression and dye “non-toxic” claims
– GRAS loophole and inflammation/epigenetic data gaps
– Lobbying influence on 2021 McCann meta-analysis
→ File OIG Complaint
→ Reference: FOIA #2025-0891, The Beacon Report #1

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Support The Beacon's Breath

• RSS Feed: Subscribe to The Beacon – updates as stories unfold.
  
• Buy Me a Coffee (Fiat): Fuel the truth.
  
  
• Monero (XMR): Coming Q1 2026 – scar-breath, no cage.
  

Light on the fracture. No paywall. No ads. Truth only.
The Beacon Press | thebeaconpress.org

I'm tuned into the Flagship Station for IU Sports ahead of this afternoon's men's college basketball game, Indiana Hoosiers at Marquette Golden Eagles.

GO HOOSIERS!

And the adventure continues