There is a strange and holy tension that runs through Revelation 19, a tension that many people feel but rarely articulate. We long for justice, yet we are afraid of what justice might look like if it finally arrives. We cry out for evil to end, yet we hesitate when Scripture shows us what the end of evil actually requires. Revelation 19 does not soothe those fears by softening the picture. It confronts them directly, and then it does something unexpected: it reveals that the One who brings final justice is not driven by rage, revenge, or loss of control, but by truth, faithfulness, and a righteousness that never corrupts itself.

This chapter does not begin with a battlefield. It begins with worship. Before a single sword is raised, before a single enemy falls, heaven erupts in praise. This order matters. Revelation 19 insists that judgment flows from worship, not the other way around. Justice is not God losing His temper. Justice is God remaining true to Himself.

The sound that opens the chapter is described as a great multitude, loud like rushing waters and mighty thunder, crying out “Alleluia.” That word has been domesticated in modern faith culture. We put it on coffee mugs and greeting cards. But here, it is not a gentle word. It is a word shouted after the fall of Babylon, after systems of exploitation, deception, and spiritual adultery finally collapse under their own weight. Heaven rejoices not because people are destroyed, but because lies no longer rule.

That distinction is crucial. Revelation 19 does not celebrate suffering. It celebrates truth winning.

Babylon, throughout Revelation, represents far more than a single city or empire. It is the accumulated weight of human systems that profit from injustice, seduce the vulnerable, and mock holiness while wearing religious language. Babylon is every economy that thrives on dehumanization. Every culture that rewards corruption. Every spiritual structure that promises life while quietly feeding on souls. When Babylon falls, heaven does not whisper. Heaven sings.

Yet even in that song, there is restraint. The praise is directed to God’s judgments because they are “true and righteous.” Not efficient. Not overwhelming. True and righteous. That phrase tells us something essential about God’s character. God does not win by becoming like what He opposes. He does not defeat deception by lying. He does not conquer violence by indulging in cruelty. His judgments are an extension of who He already is.

This is where Revelation 19 begins to reframe how we understand power.

On earth, power often reveals itself through dominance. The ability to crush opposition. The ability to silence critics. The ability to impose one’s will without consequence. Revelation 19 introduces a different kind of power, one that does not need to prove itself by spectacle. Before Christ ever appears riding the white horse, heaven has already declared who He is. He is faithful. He is true. He judges and makes war in righteousness.

Those words deserve to be lingered over. Faithful means He does not change allegiances. He does not abandon His promises. He does not betray His own nature to achieve results. True means He is reality itself, not merely accurate but dependable. When He speaks, the world aligns to His word rather than His word adjusting to the world.

This is why Revelation 19 unsettles people who prefer a gentle, non-confrontational Jesus. The problem is not that this Jesus is too harsh. The problem is that He refuses to be controlled.

When heaven opens and the Rider appears, He does not come as a negotiator. He comes as a King. Yet even here, the imagery subverts expectations. His robe is dipped in blood before the battle begins. This detail has puzzled readers for centuries. If the battle has not yet been fought, whose blood stains His garment?

The answer is uncomfortable and beautiful at the same time. The blood is His own.

Revelation does not introduce a new Jesus in chapter 19. It reveals the same Jesus in a different role. The Lamb who was slain is now the Rider who judges. The One who absorbed violence is the One who ends it. He does not arrive bloodless because He has already paid the cost of redemption. Judgment does not erase the cross. Judgment flows from it.

This is one of the most misunderstood aspects of Revelation. Many people imagine the final judgment as God abandoning mercy. In reality, it is mercy’s final boundary. Mercy extended endlessly without response becomes permission for abuse. Love that never confronts evil ceases to be love. Revelation 19 shows us a Jesus who has exhausted every invitation and now closes the door not out of bitterness, but out of faithfulness to truth.

The Rider’s eyes are described as a flame of fire. This is not a symbol of anger. It is a symbol of vision. Fire sees what darkness hides. Fire reveals what shadows conceal. There is no performance that survives that gaze. No reputation. No spiritual résumé. No carefully curated image. Revelation 19 reminds us that the final judgment is not based on how convincing we appear, but on who we actually are.

On His head are many crowns, a deliberate contrast to the beast earlier in Revelation who wore counterfeit authority. These crowns do not represent tyranny. They represent rightful ownership. Every domain that claimed independence from God is shown to have been borrowing authority it never possessed. The Rider does not steal power. He reclaims it.

Then comes one of the most striking details: He has a name written that no one knows but Himself. This single line dismantles our desire to reduce God into manageable categories. Even at the climax of history, even as He reveals Himself in glory, there remains an aspect of God that is not accessible, not explainable, not usable. He is not a tool for our causes. He is not a mascot for our movements. He is Lord.

This unknown name is not a flaw in revelation. It is a safeguard. It reminds us that no theology, no doctrine, no sermon ever exhausts God. We can know Him truly without knowing Him completely. Revelation 19 humbles every system that claims full ownership of God’s will.

When the armies of heaven follow Him, they are clothed in fine linen, white and clean. They carry no weapons. This detail is often overlooked. The power does not come from the army. It comes from the Rider. The saints do not fight the battle. They witness it. Victory is not achieved by human effort amplified by divine assistance. It is achieved by divine authority expressed in perfect alignment with truth.

The sword comes from His mouth.

Again, Revelation refuses to play by earthly rules. This is not a weapon forged by human hands. It is the Word. The same Word that created the universe now ends the rebellion against it. Lies collapse when confronted by unfiltered truth. Systems built on deception cannot survive reality forever. Revelation 19 does not portray Jesus swinging wildly in rage. It portrays Him speaking, and reality rearranging itself accordingly.

This is terrifying if you love illusion. It is liberating if you love truth.

The chapter moves inexorably toward confrontation, but the tone never shifts into chaos. Everything is measured. Everything is deliberate. The beast and the false prophet are captured, not chased. Their end is swift, not dramatic. Revelation 19 refuses to glorify evil even in its destruction. There is no long monologue. No heroic struggle. Evil is exposed, judged, and removed.

This is important for those who fear that God’s justice will mirror human cruelty. It does not. God does not savor punishment. He concludes it.

For believers, Revelation 19 is not meant to incite fear but to produce clarity. It asks uncomfortable questions. What systems do we benefit from that resemble Babylon more than the Kingdom? What compromises have we baptized as wisdom? What lies have we learned to live with because confronting them would cost too much?

Revelation 19 does not allow neutrality. It insists that history is moving somewhere, and that the end will not be negotiated by opinion polls or softened by sentimentality. Yet it also reassures us that the One guiding history is not unstable, not impulsive, not cruel. He is faithful and true.

Perhaps the most overlooked moment in the chapter is the marriage supper of the Lamb. Amid judgment, there is celebration. Amid the fall of corrupt systems, there is intimacy. God does not end history to stand alone. He ends history to dwell with His people fully, without distortion, without interference, without rival powers constantly poisoning the relationship.

The bride is clothed in fine linen, which is explained as the righteous acts of the saints. This is not self-righteousness. It is faith lived out. Obedience that mattered. Love that endured. Choices that aligned with truth even when it was costly. Revelation 19 affirms that our lives are not forgotten footnotes. They are woven into the final story.

The chapter closes not with uncertainty, but with finality. Evil does not escape. Truth does not retreat. Jesus does not abdicate. The Rider remains on the horse, history completed beneath Him, authority undisputed.

Revelation 19 does not invite us to speculate about timelines or obsess over symbols. It invites us to decide where we stand now. Not politically. Not culturally. Spiritually. Are we aligned with truth, or merely comfortable? Are we faithful, or merely familiar with faith language? Are we waiting for the Rider, or hoping He delays because His arrival would expose too much?

This chapter reminds us that Jesus is not returning as a spiritual concept or a moral example. He is returning as King. The same King who washed feet. The same King who bore wounds. The same King who forgave enemies. But also the King who will no longer allow lies to masquerade as life.

Revelation 19 is not the end of the story for believers. It is the end of the struggle between truth and deception. It is the moment when faith becomes sight, when hope becomes reality, and when love finally operates without resistance.

History does not end in fire because God is angry. It ends in truth because God is faithful.

And that is why heaven sings before the battle even begins.

The continuation of Revelation 19 presses us deeper into a reality most people instinctively avoid: the certainty that truth, once fully revealed, leaves no room for partial allegiance. This is not because God is intolerant, but because truth by its very nature refuses to coexist with lies indefinitely. Revelation 19 is not a threat dangling over humanity; it is a resolution. It is the end of ambiguity.

One of the most important shifts that happens in this chapter is the transfer of attention away from humanity’s response and onto God’s character. Much religious anxiety is rooted in the fear that judgment is arbitrary, emotional, or inconsistent. Revelation 19 dismantles that fear by anchoring every action in who Christ already is. He does not become judge because circumstances demand it. He judges because faithfulness requires it. He does not act to defend His ego. He acts to defend reality itself.

The title written on Him, “King of kings and Lord of lords,” is not merely a declaration of rank. It is a declaration of legitimacy. Every power structure that claimed final authority is revealed as provisional. Every throne that demanded ultimate loyalty is exposed as temporary. Revelation 19 does not deny that other powers existed. It denies that they were ever sovereign.

This matters deeply for those who feel crushed by forces larger than themselves. Political systems. Economic pressures. Cultural expectations. Religious institutions that drifted from truth. Revelation 19 does not tell believers to escape these systems prematurely, but it does promise that none of them get the last word. History does not belong to whoever controls the most resources. It belongs to the One who is faithful and true.

There is also a sobering message here for those who confuse moral passion with righteousness. The Rider does not share His authority. No one rides beside Him as an equal. This is not because God refuses partnership, but because final judgment cannot be crowdsourced. Human justice systems fail precisely because they are influenced by fear, favoritism, exhaustion, and self-interest. Revelation 19 insists that ultimate judgment must remain in hands that cannot be corrupted.

This does not make believers passive. It makes them faithful.

The saints follow the Rider not to fight, but to witness. That distinction reframes what it means to live faithfully now. We are not called to bring the Kingdom by force. We are called to live in alignment with it so clearly that when it arrives, we are already facing the right direction.

One of the most uncomfortable truths Revelation 19 reveals is that evil does not collapse gradually into goodness. It ends decisively. The beast and false prophet are not rehabilitated. They are removed. This is not cruelty. It is clarity. There are forms of deception that cannot be reformed because their entire existence depends on distortion. Revelation 19 does not portray God as unwilling to forgive; it portrays Him as unwilling to preserve systems that exist solely to destroy.

This confronts a modern tendency to believe that everything can be redeemed if given enough time. Scripture is more nuanced. People can repent. Systems built on lies cannot. Babylon does not need therapy. It needs to fall.

For believers reading Revelation 19 today, the question is not whether we agree with the imagery. The question is whether our lives reflect trust in a future where God’s justice actually arrives. Many people live as though injustice is permanent and evil inevitable. Revelation 19 declares that both are temporary.

That declaration carries responsibility. If we believe truth will ultimately prevail, then our present compromises become harder to justify. If we believe Christ will reign visibly, then living as though He is optional now becomes inconsistent. Revelation 19 does not pressure us to perform righteousness. It invites us to live coherently.

Perhaps the most profound comfort in this chapter is that the final victory does not depend on human endurance. Many believers are tired. Tired of resisting cultural pressure. Tired of explaining their faith. Tired of watching lies spread faster than truth. Revelation 19 does not scold that fatigue. It answers it. It says, in effect, you are not holding history together. You are being held by the One who is.

The Rider does not ask the saints to finish the work. He finishes it Himself.

This changes how we understand perseverance. We are not persevering to make God’s plan succeed. We are persevering because it already will. Faithfulness is not anxiety-driven effort. It is trust expressed over time.

Revelation 19 also exposes a subtle but dangerous temptation: the desire to see judgment fall on others while assuming exemption for ourselves. The chapter offers no such comfort. The same fire that reveals deception reveals everything. The same truth that dismantles Babylon examines the bride. The difference is not that believers are flawless. It is that they are clothed. Covered. Aligned with the Lamb who was slain.

This returns us again to the blood-stained robe. Judgment and mercy are not opposing forces here. They are inseparable. The One who judges does so as the One who died. This ensures that justice is never disconnected from love. The cross remains the lens through which judgment operates. God does not forget Calvary when He confronts rebellion. He remembers it.

Revelation 19 therefore invites a deeper kind of hope. Not optimism that things will improve gradually, but confidence that truth is undefeated even when temporarily obscured. Hope that does not depend on trends or outcomes or public approval. Hope anchored in a King whose authority does not fluctuate.

As the chapter concludes, Scripture does not linger on the aftermath. It does not describe celebrations in detail. It does not catalog rewards. It simply establishes that the opposition is gone. The noise that dominated history has ceased. What remains is order, presence, and peace grounded in truth.

That restraint is intentional. Revelation is not interested in spectacle for its own sake. It is interested in alignment. The final image is not chaos resolved, but authority settled.

For those who read Revelation 19 and feel fear, the invitation is not to turn away, but to look closer. Fear often comes from imagining judgment divorced from love. Revelation 19 refuses that separation. The Rider who ends deception is the same One who invited sinners to His table. The King who dismantles false power is the same One who refused to call down angels when mocked.

The question Revelation 19 leaves us with is simple, though not easy: do we trust that kind of King?

Not a king who flatters us. Not a king who validates every desire. But a King who tells the truth even when it costs Him, and who ends lies even when they are popular.

Revelation 19 assures us that such a King reigns, rides, and returns.

And because He is faithful and true, history does not end in confusion.

It ends in truth.

Watch Douglas Vandergraph’s inspiring faith-based videos on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@douglasvandergraph

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Your friend, Douglas Vandergraph

#Revelation19 #FaithAndTruth #ChristTheKing #BiblicalHope #EndOfDeception #KingOfKings

I am not an iOS developer, though I do a lot of dabbling with various languages, frameworks, etc. This week, I shipped my first app — PetPilot — to the App Store using Claude Code, and have two more that I'll hopefully share soon.

PetPilot is a free (no, like actually free: no in-app purchases, no ads) app to coordinate pet care in your household.

For the last two years my wife and I have been using an app to track care tasks for our golden retrievers, Pierogi and Pickle. The app we were using is “free”, but has ads and feels pretty dated/hasn't been well maintained. I decided to build my own version that optimizes for what we care about: low friction/one touch logging of things like feeding and potty breaks. (Instead of a screenshot of my app, I'm paying the cute dog tax on this post.)

I've never built an iOS app before and I barely know a lick of Swift, but this was a great experiment in using Claude to build something real. I originally started this project in July, but hit a major roadblock: a key feature is iCloud syncing/sharing so you can see each other's updates, but Opus 4.1 couldn't seem to get the cloud sync features to work after many attempts (and again, I am a very novice iOS dev.)

However, after Opus 4.5 came out I picked the project back up and in just a few hours everything was working great. It's almost a cliche at this point, but things are evolving quickly in the AI coding space.

If you're interested, you can download PetPilot here.

I hope if you decide to check it out that you find it useful.

There is something haunting about Revelation 18 that lingers long after you close the page. It is not the beasts or the judgments or even the fire. It is the silence. The chapter does not merely describe destruction; it describes the end of a sound. The end of music, commerce, celebration, routine, and confidence. It describes a world that assumed it was permanent suddenly discovering that it was fragile all along.

Revelation 18 is not written to scare believers into submission. It is written to wake them up. This chapter is not about curiosity concerning the end of the world; it is about clarity concerning the world we are already living in. It forces an uncomfortable question to the surface: what happens when everything people trusted collapses at once?

John is shown the fall of Babylon, but Babylon is not just a city. Babylon is a system. Babylon is an arrangement of values. Babylon is the belief that wealth can replace righteousness, that pleasure can replace purpose, that power can replace God. Babylon is what happens when human ambition organizes itself without humility and then convinces itself that it is untouchable.

The language of Revelation 18 is intentional and poetic. It is not rushed. It slows the reader down and makes them sit with the consequences. Babylon does not fall quietly. It falls publicly. Kings see it. Merchants weep over it. Shipmasters stand at a distance and mourn it. And heaven, shockingly, rejoices over it.

That contrast alone should make us pause. The same event produces grief on earth and joy in heaven. That tells us something vital: heaven and earth do not measure success the same way.

Babylon is described as wealthy beyond imagination. Gold, silver, precious stones, fine linen, purple, silk, scarlet, scented wood, ivory, bronze, iron, marble. The list is long and almost exhausting. It reads like an inventory report, because that is exactly the point. Babylon reduced human worth to market value. Everything was for sale, even souls.

That line should stop anyone in their tracks. “The souls of men.” Not just labor. Not just products. Souls. Identity. Dignity. Conscience. Everything had a price tag. This is not ancient history. This is not symbolic fluff. This is a mirror.

Revelation 18 is confronting a world where success is measured by acquisition, where influence is measured by visibility, where morality is flexible as long as profit is high. Babylon thrives in environments where people stop asking whether something is right and only ask whether it works.

The reason Babylon’s fall is so devastating is because it was trusted. Kings partnered with it. Merchants depended on it. People built their futures on it. And that is the danger. Babylon does not announce itself as evil. It presents itself as necessary. It becomes normal. It becomes the air people breathe.

That is why God’s command in the middle of this chapter is so striking: “Come out of her, my people.” Not run when she falls. Not hide when she burns. Come out before it happens.

This tells us something deeply personal. Revelation 18 is not just about judgment on systems; it is about separation of hearts. God is not only dismantling Babylon; He is rescuing people from being crushed beneath it.

The chapter makes clear that Babylon’s sins reached heaven. That phrase matters. It means corruption was not isolated. It was layered. Compounded. Normalized. What began as compromise grew into a culture. What began as convenience grew into captivity.

And when judgment comes, it comes “in one hour.” That phrase is repeated. One hour. Not gradually. Not slowly enough to adjust portfolios or rewrite narratives. One hour. This is the great shock of the chapter. Babylon did not see it coming because Babylon assumed continuity.

This is the lie every empire tells itself. We have always been here. We will always be here. Our systems are too big to fail. Our influence is too widespread to collapse. Our wealth is too diversified to vanish.

Revelation 18 says otherwise.

The merchants weep not because people are starving, but because no one buys their cargo anymore. That detail is intentional. Their grief is not humanitarian. It is financial. Their sorrow is not moral. It is economic. The system trained them to value profit over people, and when the system dies, so does their sense of meaning.

There is something chilling about how the chapter describes their mourning. They stand at a distance. They do not rush to help. They do not attempt to rebuild. They watch and lament what they have lost. Babylon taught them to observe pain, not alleviate it.

Then comes the silence. No more music. No more craftsmen. No more mills. No more lamps. No more weddings. The ordinary rhythms of life disappear. This is not just destruction; it is desolation. The very things that made life feel alive are gone.

Babylon promised fullness but delivered emptiness. It promised abundance but produced absence. It promised joy but ended in silence.

And then heaven speaks. Rejoice. Rejoice over her, thou heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets. This is one of the most misunderstood moments in Revelation. Heaven is not celebrating suffering. Heaven is celebrating justice. Heaven is celebrating the end of exploitation. Heaven is celebrating the collapse of a system that devoured the vulnerable.

This is where Revelation 18 becomes deeply personal for believers today. We are not called to fear Babylon’s fall. We are called to examine our attachments to it.

What systems do we trust more than God? What identities are we building on things that cannot last? What comforts are we defending that quietly shape our conscience?

Babylon is not just “out there.” Babylon is any arrangement that rewards compromise and punishes faithfulness. Babylon is any culture that demands silence in exchange for security. Babylon is any system that thrives on distraction so people never stop to ask who they are becoming.

God’s call is not isolation from the world, but disentanglement from its idolatry. “Come out of her” does not mean physical withdrawal; it means spiritual clarity. It means refusing to let temporary power define eternal values.

Revelation 18 exposes the difference between wealth and worth. Wealth accumulates. Worth is given. Wealth can vanish in an hour. Worth is anchored in God.

Babylon believed it was a queen and would see no sorrow. That line reveals the heart of pride. Self-sufficiency always assumes immunity. It believes consequences are for others. It believes collapse happens elsewhere.

Scripture consistently warns against this posture, not because God is anti-success, but because pride blinds. Pride anesthetizes the conscience. Pride convinces people they are secure when they are actually standing on sand.

The chapter ends with a stone thrown into the sea, symbolizing finality. Babylon will not rise again. There is no reboot. No rebrand. No comeback story. This is not a temporary downturn; it is a permanent end.

That should sober us. Not because we fear loss, but because we must choose where we invest our lives.

Revelation 18 is not calling believers to panic. It is calling them to freedom. Freedom from systems that demand allegiance. Freedom from values that hollow out the soul. Freedom from identities that cannot survive eternity.

This chapter whispers a truth that becomes louder with every generation: what dazzles the world often disappears first. What seems unshakable is often already cracked. What feels permanent is usually temporary.

The question is not whether Babylon will fall. Scripture is clear. The question is whether we will still be standing when it does.

This is where we must go deeper, because Revelation 18 is not finished with us yet. It still has more to expose, more to challenge, and more to redeem.

The fall of Babylon is not the end of the story. It is the clearing of the ground.

And what God builds next stands forever.

Revelation 18 does not merely describe the collapse of Babylon as an external event; it presses inward, forcing a reckoning with how deeply Babylon embeds itself into human imagination. The chapter lingers not on fire alone, but on attachment. It shows us how people loved Babylon, relied on Babylon, defended Babylon, and defined themselves through Babylon. That is what makes the fall so catastrophic. When Babylon collapses, it is not just buildings that burn; identities unravel.

One of the most sobering elements of Revelation 18 is how normal everything felt right up until the moment it ended. People were buying, selling, trading, marrying, creating, singing. Life went on. Babylon did not collapse during chaos. It collapsed during routine. That detail matters because it reveals how deception works. Rarely does it announce itself with alarms. More often, it lulls people into thinking tomorrow will look just like today.

This is why Scripture consistently warns against loving the world. Not because creation is evil, but because systems built on pride train the heart to expect continuity where none is guaranteed. Babylon convinced people that stability was self-generated, that prosperity was self-sustaining, that influence was self-justifying. Revelation 18 tears that illusion apart.

The kings of the earth weep because their power was tied to Babylon’s prosperity. Their authority was not rooted in justice or truth; it was rooted in access. When the system collapsed, their significance collapsed with it. This is one of the great exposures of the chapter: power that depends on corrupt systems cannot survive their removal.

The merchants weep because their wealth had no redundancy. Their entire sense of success was transactional. When the market died, meaning died. That is why their grief sounds hollow. They mourn loss, not repentance. They mourn revenue, not wrongdoing.

And the shipmasters weep because they stood at a distance their entire lives. They benefited without proximity. They transported goods but never examined the cost. Babylon trained people to profit from harm without ever touching it. Revelation 18 removes that buffer. Distance no longer protects anyone from consequence.

Then comes the most chilling phrase in the chapter: “in her was found the blood of prophets, and of saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth.” Babylon was not neutral. It was violent. It silenced truth-tellers. It crushed dissent. It rewarded compliance. And it did so quietly enough that many never noticed.

This is where Revelation 18 becomes impossible to keep abstract. Every generation must ask where truth is being suppressed for convenience, where conscience is being traded for comfort, where silence is rewarded more than courage. Babylon thrives wherever truth becomes negotiable.

God’s judgment is described as righteous because Babylon was warned. Light was given. Truth was available. But Babylon chose indulgence over repentance. That is why the call to “come out of her” is mercy, not condemnation. It is God saying, you do not have to go down with this.

This call is not about geography. It is about allegiance. You can live within a system without belonging to it. You can function in the world without absorbing its values. That tension is the daily work of faith.

Revelation 18 confronts believers with a quiet but piercing question: if everything you rely on vanished overnight, what would still remain of you? Not your bank account. Not your reputation. Not your network. You.

And more importantly, your relationship with God.

Babylon collapses because it was built without reverence. It had no fear of God. It believed itself self-originating and self-sustaining. Scripture consistently shows that when societies remove God from the center, something else rushes in to take His place. Usually wealth. Usually power. Usually pleasure.

Those substitutes can function for a time, but they cannot hold weight forever. Revelation 18 is the moment when they buckle.

The silence described at the end of the chapter is not only physical. It is spiritual. When false gods fall, they leave no voice behind. They cannot comfort. They cannot restore. They cannot explain suffering. They simply disappear.

This is why heaven rejoices. Not because people suffer, but because lies end. Because oppression stops. Because the long manipulation of souls finally ceases. Heaven celebrates the truth being restored to its rightful place.

For believers, Revelation 18 is both a warning and a promise. The warning is clear: do not anchor your life to systems that cannot survive eternity. The promise is equally clear: God sees. God remembers. God judges rightly. And God rescues His people before destruction comes.

This chapter also prepares us emotionally for what follows in Revelation. The fall of Babylon makes room for the arrival of something better. God does not tear down without rebuilding. He does not remove false security without offering true refuge.

Revelation 18 clears the ground so Revelation 19 can introduce the marriage supper of the Lamb. Silence makes room for worship. Ashes make room for glory. Loss makes room for restoration.

That is the deeper hope woven into this chapter. Babylon falls, but God remains. Systems collapse, but the Kingdom stands. What was counterfeit fades so what is eternal can finally be seen.

If Revelation 18 unsettles you, it is doing its job. It is meant to loosen your grip on what cannot last and strengthen your hold on what will. It is meant to pull your gaze upward when the world insists you look around. It is meant to remind you that no matter how loud Babylon becomes, its music will eventually stop.

And when it does, only what was built on truth will still be standing.

That is not something to fear.

That is something to prepare for.

Watch Douglas Vandergraph’s inspiring faith-based videos on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@douglasvandergraph

Support the ministry by buying Douglas a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/douglasvandergraph

Your friend, Douglas Vandergraph

#Revelation #Faith #BibleStudy #ChristianReflection #EndTimes #SpiritualTruth #BiblicalWisdom #HopeInChrist #KingdomOfGod

Somewhere in a data centre, a pipeline is failing. Not with a dramatic explosion or a cascade of red alerts, but with the quiet malevolence of a null value slipping through validation checks, corrupting records, and propagating errors downstream before anyone notices. By the time engineers trace the problem back to its source, hours have passed, dashboards have gone dark, and business decisions have been made on fundamentally broken data.

This scenario plays out thousands of times daily across enterprises worldwide. According to Gartner research, poor data quality costs organisations an average of $12.9 million to $15 million annually, with 20 to 30 per cent of enterprise revenue lost due to data inefficiencies. The culprit behind many of these failures is deceptively simple: malformed JSON, unexpected null values, and schema drift that silently breaks the assumptions upon which entire systems depend.

Yet the tools and patterns to prevent these catastrophes exist. They have existed for years. The question is not whether organisations can protect their content ingestion pipelines from null and malformed JSON, but whether they will adopt the defensive programming patterns, open-source validation libraries, and observability practices that can reduce downstream incidents by orders of magnitude.

The economic stakes are staggering. Production defects cost enterprises $1.7 trillion globally each year, with individual critical bugs averaging $5.6 million in business impact. Schema drift incidents alone carry an estimated average cost of $35,000 per incident. For data-intensive organisations, these are not abstract figures but line items that directly impact profitability and competitive position.

The Anatomy of Pipeline Failure

Content ingestion pipelines are the circulatory system of modern data infrastructure. They consume data from APIs, message queues, file uploads, and third-party integrations, transforming and routing information to databases, analytics systems, and downstream applications. When they work, they are invisible. When they fail, the consequences ripple outward in ways that can take weeks to fully understand.

The fundamental challenge is that JSON, despite its ubiquity as a data interchange format, provides no guarantees about structure. A field that contained a string yesterday might contain null today. An array that once held objects might arrive empty. A required field might simply vanish when an upstream team refactors their API without updating downstream consumers. The lightweight flexibility that made JSON popular is precisely what makes it dangerous in production systems that depend on consistent structure.

Schema drift, as this phenomenon is known, occurs when changes to a data model in one system are not synchronised across connected systems. According to industry analysis, the average cost per schema drift incident is estimated at $35,000, with undetected drift sometimes requiring complete system remapping that costs millions. One analysis suggests schema drift silently breaks enterprise data architecture at a cost of up to $2.1 million annually in broken processes, failed initiatives, and compliance risk.

The problem compounds because JSON parsing failures often do not fail loudly. A missing field might be coerced to null, which then propagates through transformations, appearing as zeros in financial calculations or blank entries in customer records. By the time the corrupted data surfaces in a quarterly report or customer complaint, the original cause is buried under layers of subsequent processing.

The hidden operational costs accumulate gradually. Most data pipeline issues do not manifest as major failures. They build slowly through missed updates, manual report fixes, and dashboards that run behind schedule. Engineers stay busy keeping things stable rather than making improvements, and decisions that should be simple start taking longer than necessary.

Defensive Programming and Null Value Handling

The first line of defence against malformed JSON is a philosophy that treats every piece of incoming data as potentially hostile. Defensive programming assumes that any piece of functionality can only be used explicitly for its intended purpose and that every input might be a malicious attempt to break the system.

In practical terms, defensive programming means expecting the worst possible outcome with every user input. Rather than trusting that upstream systems will always send well-formed data, defensive pipelines validate everything at the point of ingestion. This approach is easier to implement than it might seem, because lifting overly strict validation rules is simpler than compensating for corrupted data by adding rules after the fact.

The MITRE organisation lists null pointer dereference as one of the most commonly exploited software weaknesses. When code attempts to access a property on a null value, the result ranges from silent corruption to complete system crashes. Errors such as buffer overflows, null pointer dereferences, and memory leaks can lead to catastrophic failures, making defensive programming essential for mitigating these risks through strict checks and balances.

Key strategies for handling null values defensively include validating all inputs before processing, avoiding returning null from methods when possible, returning empty collections or default objects rather than null, and using static analysis tools to detect potential null pointer issues before deployment. Static analysis tools such as Splint detect null pointer dereferences by analysing pointers at procedure interface boundaries, enabling teams to catch problems before code reaches production.

The trade-off of defensive programming is worth considering. While users no longer see the programme crash, neither does the test or quality assurance department. The programme might now silently fail despite programming errors in the caller. This is why defensive programming must be paired with observability: catching problems silently is only useful if those problems are logged and monitored effectively.

JSON Schema as a Validation Standard

JSON Schema has emerged as the primary standard for defining the structure and constraints of JSON documents. By specifying the expected data types, formats, and constraints that data should adhere to, schemas make it possible to catch errors early in the processing pipeline, ensuring that only valid data reaches downstream systems.

The current stable version, draft 2020-12, introduced significant improvements including redesigned array and tuple keywords, dynamic references, and better handling of unevaluated properties. The items and additionalItems keywords were replaced by prefixItems and items, providing cleaner semantics for array validation. The format vocabulary was divided into format-annotation and format-assertion, providing clearer semantics for format validation.

JSON Schema validation reportedly prevents 60 per cent of API integration failures and ensures data consistency across distributed systems. When schemas are enforced at ingestion boundaries, invalid data is rejected immediately rather than allowed to propagate. This fail-fast approach transforms debugging from an archaeological expedition through logs and databases into a simple matter of reading validation error messages.

The specification handles null values explicitly. When a schema specifies a type of null, it has only one acceptable value: null itself. Importantly, null in JSON is not equivalent to something being absent, a distinction that catches many developers off guard. To handle nullable fields, schemas define types as arrays that include both the expected type and null.

Community discussions emphasise that schema validation errors affect user experience profoundly, requiring clear and actionable error messages rather than technical implementation details. The goal is not merely to reject invalid data but to communicate why data was rejected in terms that enable rapid correction.

Validation Libraries for Production Systems

Implementing JSON Schema validation requires libraries that can parse schemas and apply them to incoming data. Several open-source options have emerged as industry standards, each with different strengths for different use cases.

Ajv (Another JSON Validator) has become the dominant choice in the JavaScript and Node.js ecosystem. According to benchmarks, Ajv is currently the fastest JSON schema validator available, running 50 per cent faster than the second-place option and 20 to 190 per cent faster in the jsck benchmark. The library generates code that turns JSON schemas into optimised validation functions, achieving performance that makes runtime validation practical even for high-throughput pipelines.

The library's production credentials are substantial. ESLint, the JavaScript linting tool used by millions of developers, relies on Ajv for validating its complex configuration files. The ESLint team has noted that Ajv has proven reliable over years of use, donating $100 monthly to support the project's continued development. Ajv has also been used in production to validate requests for a federated undiagnosed genetic disease programme that has led to new scientific discoveries.

Beyond raw speed, Ajv provides security guarantees that matter for production deployments. Version 7 was rebuilt with secure code generation as a primary objective, providing type-level guarantees against remote code execution even when processing untrusted schemas. The best performance is achieved when using compiled functions returned by the compile or getSchema methods, with applications compiling schemas only once and reusing compiled validation functions throughout their lifecycle.

For TypeScript applications, Zod has gained significant traction as a schema validation library that bridges compile-time type safety and runtime validation. TypeScript only exists during coding; the moment code compiles to JavaScript, type checks vanish, leaving applications vulnerable to external APIs, user inputs, and unexpected null values. Zod addresses this gap by allowing developers to declare a validator once while automatically inferring the corresponding TypeScript type.

The goal of Zod is to eliminate duplicative type declarations. Developers declare a validator once and Zod automatically infers the static TypeScript type, making it easy to compose simpler types into complex data structures. When validation fails, the parse method throws a ZodError instance with granular information about validation issues.

For binary serialisation in streaming data pipelines, Apache Avro and Protocol Buffers provide schema-based validation with additional benefits. Avro's handling of schema evolution is particularly sophisticated. The Avro parser can accept two different schemas, using resolution rules to translate data from the writer schema into the reader schema. This capability is extremely valuable in production systems because it allows different components to be updated independently without worrying about compatibility.

Protocol Buffers use .proto files where each field receives a unique numeric tag as its identifier. Fields can be added, deprecated, or removed, but never reused. This approach is particularly well-suited to microservices architectures where performance and interoperability are paramount.

Centralised Schema Management with Registries

As systems grow more complex, managing schemas across dozens of services becomes its own challenge. Schema registries provide centralised repositories for storing, versioning, and validating schemas, ensuring that producers and consumers agree on data formats before messages are exchanged.

Confluent Schema Registry has become the standard for Apache Kafka deployments. The registry provides a RESTful interface for storing and retrieving Avro, JSON Schema, and Protobuf schemas, maintaining a versioned history based on configurable subject name strategies. It enforces compatibility rules that prevent breaking changes and enables governance workflows where teams negotiate schema changes safely.

The architecture is designed for production resilience. Schema Registry uses Kafka itself as a commit log to store all registered schemas durably, maintaining in-memory indices for fast lookups. A single registry instance can handle approximately 10,000 unique schemas, covering most enterprise deployments. The registry has no disk-resident data; the only disk usage comes from storing log files.

For larger organisations, multi-datacenter deployments synchronise data across sites, protect against data loss, and reduce latency. Schema Registry is designed to work as a distributed service using single primary architecture, where at most one instance is the primary at any moment. Durability configurations should set min.insync.replicas on the schemas topic higher than one, ensuring schema registration is durable across multiple replicas.

Alternative options include AWS Glue Schema Registry for organisations invested in the AWS ecosystem and Karapace as an open-source alternative to Confluent's offering. Regardless of the specific tool, the pattern remains consistent: centralise schema management to prevent drift and enforce compatibility.

Contract Testing for Microservices Integration

While schema validation catches structural problems with individual messages, contract testing addresses a different challenge: ensuring that services can actually communicate with each other successfully. In microservices architectures where different teams manage different services, assumptions about API behaviour can diverge in subtle ways that schema validation alone cannot detect.

Pact has emerged as the leading open-source framework for consumer-driven contract testing. Unlike schemas or specifications that describe all possible states of a resource, a Pact contract is enforced by executing test cases that describe concrete request and response pairs. This approach is effectively contract by example, validating actual integration behaviour rather than theoretical structure.

The consumer-driven aspect of Pact places the consumers of services at the centre of the design process. Consumers define their expectations for provider APIs, and these expectations are captured as contracts that providers must satisfy. This inversion ensures that APIs actually meet the needs of their callers rather than making assumptions about how consumers will use them.

Contract testing bridges gaps among different testing methodologies. It is a technique for testing integration points by isolating each microservice and checking whether the HTTP requests and responses conform to a shared understanding documented in a contract. Pact enables identification of mismatches between consumer and provider early in the development process, reducing the likelihood of integration failures during later stages.

The Pact Broker provides infrastructure for sharing contracts and verification results across teams. By integrating with CI/CD pipelines, the broker enables automated detection of breaking changes before they reach production. Teams can rapidly increase test coverage across system integration points by reusing existing tests on both sides of an integration.

For Pact to work effectively, both consumer and provider teams must agree on adopting the contract testing approach. When one side does not commit to the process, the framework loses its value. While Pact excels at testing HTTP-based services, support for other protocols like gRPC or Kafka requires additional plugins.

The return on investment for contract testing can be substantial. Analysis suggests that implementing contract testing delivers positive returns, with cumulative savings exceeding cumulative investments by the end of the second year. A conservative estimate places complete recovery of initial investment within three to four years for a single team, with benefits amplifying as more teams adopt the practice.

Observability for Data Pipeline Health

Validation and contract testing provide preventive controls, but production systems also require visibility into what is actually happening. Observability enables teams to detect and diagnose problems that slip past preventive measures.

OpenTelemetry has become the primary open-source standard for collecting and processing telemetry data. The OpenTelemetry Collector acts as a neutral intermediary for collecting, processing, and forwarding traces, metrics, and logs to observability backends. This architecture simplifies observability setups by eliminating the need for multiple agents for different telemetry types, consolidating everything into a unified collection point.

For data pipelines specifically, observability must extend beyond traditional application monitoring. Data quality issues often manifest as subtle anomalies rather than outright failures. A pipeline might continue running successfully while producing incorrect results because an upstream schema change caused fields to be misinterpreted. Without observability into data characteristics, these problems remain invisible until their effects surface in business processes.

OpenTelemetry Weaver, introduced in 2025, addresses schema validation challenges by providing design-time validation that can run as part of CI/CD pipelines. The tool enables schema definition through semantic conventions, validation of telemetry against defined schemas, and type-safe code generation for client SDKs. By catching observability issues in CI/CD rather than production, Weaver shifts the detection of problems earlier in the development lifecycle.

The impact of observability on incident response is well-documented. According to research from New Relic, organisations with mature observability practices experience 34 per cent less downtime annually compared to those without. Those achieving full-stack observability are 18 per cent more likely to resolve high-business-impact outages in 30 minutes or less. Organisations with five or more observability capabilities deployed are 42 per cent more likely to achieve this rapid resolution.

Observability adoption materially improves mean time to recovery. In North America, 67 per cent of organisations reported 50 per cent or greater improvement in mean time to recovery after adopting observability practices. Integrating real-time monitoring tools with alerting systems can reduce incident response times by an average of 30 per cent.

For data engineering specifically, the statistics are sobering. Data teams reported an average of 67 incidents per month in 2023, up from 59 in 2022, signalling growing data-source sprawl and schema volatility. Mean time to resolve climbed to 15 hours, a 166 per cent year-over-year increase. Without observability tooling, 68 per cent of teams need four or more hours just to detect issues.

Shift-Left Testing for Early Defect Detection

The economics of defect detection are brutally clear: the earlier a problem is found, the cheaper it is to fix. This principle, known as shift-left testing, advocates for moving testing activities earlier in the development lifecycle rather than treating testing as a phase that occurs after development is complete.

Shift-left testing is a proactive approach that involves performing testing activities earlier in the software development lifecycle. Unlike traditional testing, the shift-left approach starts testing from the very beginning, during requirements gathering, design, or even planning stages. This helps identify defects, ambiguities, or performance bottlenecks early, when they are cheaper and easier to fix.

In data engineering, shift-left testing means moving data quality checks earlier in the pipeline. Instead of focusing monitoring efforts at the data warehouse stage, shift-left testing ensures that issues are detected as soon as data enters the pipeline. A shift-left approach catches problems like schema changes, data anomalies, and inconsistencies before they propagate, preventing costly fixes and bad business decisions.

Key data pipeline monitors include data diff tools that detect unexpected changes in output, schema change detection that alerts on structural modifications, metrics monitoring that tracks data quality indicators over time, and data tests that validate business rules and constraints. Real-time anomaly detection is absolutely critical. By setting up real-time alerts for issues like data freshness or schema changes, data teams can respond to problems as they arise.

Automated testing within CI/CD pipelines forms the foundation of shift-left practices. Running unit, integration, and smoke tests automatically on every commit catches problems before they merge into main branches. Having developers run one automated test locally before any commit catches roughly 40 per cent more issues upfront than traditional approaches.

The benefits of shift-left testing are measurable. A strategic approach can deliver 50 per cent faster releases and 40 per cent fewer production escapes, directly impacting revenue and reducing downtime costs. Enterprises that transition from manual to automated API testing approaches reduce their critical defect escape rate by an average of 85 per cent within the first 12 months.

Economic Returns from Schema-First Development

The business case for schema-first ingestion and automated contract validation extends beyond preventing incidents. By establishing clear contracts between systems, organisations reduce coordination costs, accelerate development, and enable teams to work independently without fear of breaking integrations.

The direct financial impact of data quality issues is substantial. Production defects cost enterprises $1.7 trillion globally each year, with individual critical bugs averaging $5.6 million in business impact. Nearly 60 per cent of organisations do not measure the annual financial cost of poor quality data. Failing to measure this impact results in reactive responses to data quality issues, missed business growth opportunities, increased risks, and lower return on investment.

Beyond direct costs, poor data quality undermines digital initiatives, weakens competitive standing, and erodes customer trust. The hidden costs accumulate through missed business growth opportunities, increased risks, and lower return on investment across data initiatives. In addition to immediate negative effects on revenue, the long-term effects of poor quality data increase the complexity of data ecosystems and lead to poor decision making.

The return on investment for implementing proper validation and testing can be dramatic. One financial institution achieved a 200 per cent return on investment within the first 12 months of implementing automated contract testing, preventing over 2,500 bugs from entering production while lowering testing cost and effort by 75 per cent and 85 per cent respectively. Another Fortune 500 organisation achieved a 10-fold increase in test case coverage with a 40 per cent increase in test execution speed.

Time and resources saved through implementing proper validation can be redirected toward innovation and development of new features. Contract testing facilitates clearer interactions between components, significantly reducing dependencies and potential blocking situations between teams. Teams who have implemented contract testing experience benefits such as the ability to test single integrations at a time, no need to create and manage dedicated test environments, and fast, reliable feedback on developer machines.

Building Layered Defence in Depth

Implementing effective protection against null and malformed JSON requires a layered approach that combines multiple techniques. No single tool or pattern provides complete protection; instead, organisations must build defence in depth.

At the ingestion boundary, JSON Schema validation should reject malformed data immediately. Schemas should be strict enough to catch problems but loose enough to accommodate legitimate variation. Defining nullable fields explicitly rather than allowing any field to be null prevents accidental acceptance of missing data. Validation errors should produce clear, actionable messages that enable rapid diagnosis and correction by upstream systems.

For inter-service communication, contract testing ensures that services agree on API behaviour beyond just data structure. Consumer-driven contracts place the focus on actual usage rather than theoretical capabilities. Integration with CI/CD pipelines catches breaking changes before deployment.

Schema registries provide governance for evolving data formats. Compatibility rules prevent breaking changes from being registered. Versioning enables gradual migration between schema versions. Centralised management prevents drift across distributed systems.

Observability provides visibility into production behaviour. OpenTelemetry provides vendor-neutral telemetry collection. Data quality metrics track validation failures, null rates, and schema violations. Alerting notifies teams when anomalies occur. Distributed tracing enables rapid root cause analysis.

Schema evolution in streaming data pipelines is not a nice-to-have but a non-negotiable requirement for production-grade real-time systems. By combining schema registries, compatible schema design, and resilient processing logic, teams can build pipelines that evolve alongside the business.

Organisational Culture and Data Ownership

Tools and patterns are necessary but not sufficient. Successful adoption of schema-first development requires cultural changes that treat data interfaces with the same rigour as application interfaces.

Treating data interfaces like APIs means formalising them with data contracts. Schema definitions using Avro, Protobuf, or JSON Schema validate incoming data at the point of ingestion. Automatic validation checks run within streaming pipelines or ingestion gateways. Breaking changes trigger build failures or alerts rather than silently propagating.

One of the most common causes of broken pipelines is schema drift, when upstream producers change the shape of data without warning, breaking downstream consumers. The fix is to treat data interfaces like APIs and formalise them with data contracts. A data contract defines the expected structure, types, and semantics of ingested data.

Teams must own the quality of data they produce, not just the functionality of their services. This ownership means understanding downstream consumers, communicating schema changes proactively, and treating breaking changes with the same gravity as breaking API changes.

Organisations conducting post-incident reviews see a 20 per cent reduction in repeat incidents. Those adopting blameless post-incident reviews see a 40 per cent reduction. Learning from failures and improving processes requires psychological safety that encourages disclosure of problems rather than concealment.

Implementing distributed tracing can lead to a 25 per cent decrease in troubleshooting time, particularly in complex architectures. Research indicates that 65 per cent of organisations find centralised logging improves incident recovery times. These capabilities require cultural investment beyond merely deploying tools.

Investing in Data Quality Infrastructure

The challenges of null and malformed JSON in content ingestion pipelines are not going away. As data volumes grow and systems become more interconnected, the potential for schema drift and data quality issues only increases. Data teams already report an average of 67 incidents per month, up from 59 the previous year.

The good news is that the tools and patterns for addressing these challenges have matured significantly. JSON Schema draft 2020-12 provides comprehensive vocabulary for structural validation. Ajv delivers validation performance that enables runtime checking even in high-throughput systems. Pact offers battle-tested contract testing for HTTP-based services. OpenTelemetry provides vendor-neutral observability. Schema registries enable centralised governance.

The organisations that thrive will be those that adopt these practices comprehensively rather than reactively. Schema-first development is not merely a technical practice but an organisational capability that reduces coordination costs, accelerates development, and prevents the cascade failures that turn minor data issues into major business problems.

The pipeline that fails silently today, corrupting data before anyone notices, represents an avoidable cost. The question is not whether organisations can afford to implement proper validation and observability. Given the documented costs of poor data quality, the question is whether they can afford not to.

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References and Sources

1. Gartner. “Data Quality: Why It Matters and How to Achieve It.” Gartner Research. https://www.gartner.com/en/data-analytics/topics/data-quality

2. JSON Schema Organisation. “JSON Schema Validation: A Vocabulary for Structural Validation of JSON.” Draft 2020-12. https://json-schema.org/draft/2020-12/json-schema-validation

3. Ajv JSON Schema Validator. Official Documentation. https://ajv.js.org/

4. ESLint. “Supporting ESLint's Dependencies.” ESLint Blog, September 2020. https://eslint.org/blog/2020/09/supporting-eslint-dependencies/

5. GitHub. “json-schema-benchmark: Benchmarks for Node.js JSON-schema validators.” https://github.com/ebdrup/json-schema-benchmark

6. Pact Documentation. “Writing Consumer Tests.” https://docs.pact.io/consumer

7. OpenTelemetry. “Observability by Design: Unlocking Consistency with OpenTelemetry Weaver.” https://opentelemetry.io/blog/2025/otel-weaver/

8. Confluent. “Schema Registry for Confluent Platform.” Confluent Documentation. https://docs.confluent.io/platform/current/schema-registry/index.html

9. New Relic. “Service-Level Metric Benchmarks.” Observability Forecast 2023. https://newrelic.com/resources/report/observability-forecast/2023/state-of-observability/service-level-metrics

10. Zod. “TypeScript-first schema validation with static type inference.” https://zod.dev/

11. GitHub. “colinhacks/zod: TypeScript-first schema validation with static type inference.” https://github.com/colinhacks/zod

12. Integrate.io. “What is Schema-Drift Incident Count for ETL Data Pipelines.” https://www.integrate.io/blog/what-is-schema-drift-incident-count/

13. Syncari. “The $2.1M Schema Drift Problem.” https://syncari.com/blog/the-2-1m-schema-drift-problem-why-enterprise-leaders-cant-ignore-this-hidden-data-destroyer/

14. Contentful. “Defensive Design and Content Model Validation.” https://www.contentful.com/blog/defensive-design-and-content-model-validation/

15. DataHen. “Ensuring Data Quality with JSON Schema Validation in Data Processing Pipelines.” https://www.datahen.com/blog/ensuring-data-quality-with-json-schema-validation-in-data-processing-pipelines/

16. Shaped. “10 Best Practices in Data Ingestion: A Scalable Framework for Real-Time, Reliable Pipelines.” https://www.shaped.ai/blog/10-best-practices-in-data-ingestion

17. Sngular. “Understanding the ROI for Contract Testing.” https://www.sngular.com/insights/299/understanding-the-roi-for-contract-testing

18. Datafold. “Data Pipeline Monitoring: Implementing Proactive Data Quality Testing.” https://www.datafold.com/blog/what-is-data-pipeline-monitoring

19. Kleppmann, Martin. “Schema evolution in Avro, Protocol Buffers and Thrift.” December 2012. https://martin.kleppmann.com/2012/12/05/schema-evolution-in-avro-protocol-buffers-thrift.html

20. Datadog. “Best Practices for Shift-Left Testing.” https://www.datadoghq.com/blog/shift-left-testing-best-practices/

21. Datadog. “Use OpenTelemetry with Observability Pipelines.” https://www.datadoghq.com/blog/observability-pipelines-otel-cost-control/

22. Parasoft. “API ROI: Maximize the ROI of API Testing.” https://www.parasoft.com/blog/maximize-the-roi-of-automated-api-testing-solutions/

23. Pactflow. “What is Contract Testing & How is it Used?” https://pactflow.io/blog/what-is-contract-testing/

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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

I’ve spent weeks disgusted with myself for allowing my iPhone 13 Mini to force an upgrade from iOS 18.6 to iOS 26. I can’t even look at you anymore, phone! Last July the e-ink Mudita Kompakt phone started officially supporting sideloaded APKs, so when my iPhone gets too slow to function I will start to look in that direction.

“The whole point is that the new U.I. has pointless animations,” I’d explained to my best friend, of iOS 26. That’s the idea, to eat battery and memory and other resources. I hate to abandon my iPhone Mini so soon after I’d finally had its lemon of a battery replaced, but this is technological coercion: an abusive relationship, with diminishing returns for the consumer.

Speaking as a person with diagnosed ME/CFS (“chronic fatigue”), I’m extra offended by iOS’s new “Liquid Glass” veneer. At a certain point you’re just like, “Listen, this is the amount of battery I have to work with. I am performant when I’m not trying to do it all with extra flourishes. This additional cognitive load is silly.” I’m irked because iMessage is animated now, with text bubbles blooping into existence. Cool. It looks great. You can't turn it off. What the fuck? This doesn’t justify a bigger, hotter lithium battery.

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Digital Rights Management

I was recently explaining to a Gen Z’er that it has become, by design, more and more difficult to strip D.R.M. from a Kindle purchase. In the era of digital media, it had really started with Apple successfully locking music purchases to iPods and iTunes. I explained the antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft, and I’d gone into detail: Bill Gates was one of the first people to have a smarthome himself. He’d envisioned, for the rest of us, a type of always-on, always-connected computer—really, a home server—and there wouldn’t be any meaningful difference between locally-stored files and remotely-stored files.

“That’s kind of what we have now?” the Gen Z’er asked me. “The cloud.”

“Exactly,” I said. So that had been Gates’s big idea, hence the blurring of the distinction between the G.U.I. ‘Windows Explorer’ and the web browser ‘Internet Explorer’. But a court of law had determined this was a violation of consumers’ free will, and that the end-user ought to be able to use Netscape Navigator if so desired.

“When you eliminate true choice,” I warned the twentysomething, “you end up with billionaires.”

Some billionaires are apparently hellbent on making the Apple iPhone the last luxury good. I mean, it was already a luxury good, but at the same time people do need phones. I’m already over it.

I don’t have the spending money for an overpriced e-ink Android, though, so I’ve been trying to make it work with my iPhone 13 Mini. I used Nugget to mostly reflatten/unslick my U.I.; then I fussed with Blank Spaces until I’d achieved a look I can live with. (There’s a constant, perceptible border on widgets now, and you can no longer ‘hide’ the dock using wallpaper tricks, so my launcher is still messier-looking than I’d like.)

My best friend thinks my launcher screen is unexpectedly pretty, with its dual competing background wallpapers—I couldn’t get the one wallpaper perfectly lined up, so the widgets are now backed by an entirely different wallpaper—and I agree with her assessment.

The Gen Z’er, conversely, stared at my home screen in confusion, remarked that it is “depressing” (“Desolate?” I suggested, and she nodded fervently), and then said something about worrying about my mental health. I laughed and promised her that I do like color, just not on my phone.

I guess winter can be tough on everyone. Right now, outside, the fields are blanched with hoarfrost, so that they match the opaque white sky. It looks like a big blank slate, which seems to really get under people’s skin sometimes.

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User Friction

I have been struggling to recover the feeling of 2005 for myself; blessedly, I’ve enlisted allies in my battle against my smartphone. For Christmas I received an inexpensive digital audio player, the FiiO Snowsky Echo Mini, which replaces my much older FiiO. I also received a Garmin for the car, plus a Kodak PixPro C1 (I happily gave away my CampSnap to a nearby child). As always, I’m still running around with my old Game Boy Micro in my purse, but for the past couple of years I’ve used an EverDrive cartridge with it. Last year I replaced the Micro’s battery, so it is good to go for maybe another decade or so. Rounding out everything are a few e-readers (I have a problem): I am so close to escaping iOS and never looking back.

Another thing I was gifted was a gen 2 Original Tamagotchi. Eventually I returned to the store and picked up a contemporary Tamagotchi Paradise. This thing is great. It’s the ultimate fidget; you could really get away from your smartphone using something like this. It’s crammed with mini-games, but a lot of them are time/progress-gated, “like Animal Crossing,” I explained to my best friend, “preventing you from playing everything all in one day.” This is the kind of friction we need.

The whole concept of “positive” technological friction is so interesting to me. U.X. designers have mostly eliminated it in favor of slick glossy surfaces because people hate to feel like their precious time is being wasted. But time is a slippery thing! If you don’t have gates and dams and a lot of texture and grit—if you don’t intentionally create friction—then time slips off, and you glance up from Candy Crush (or whatever infinitely-scrolling dopamine drip you prefer) and you stare at the clock like “huh?”

With that, it’s almost time for me to post an EDC selfie to the r/dumbphones subreddit. Admittedly, posting a picture of an iPhone there is just begging for a dogpile (“this place is getting to be as bad as r/veganism,” someone recently commented, of the subreddit’s purity tests), but I’m very proud of how small all my devices are, including my vape.

“But Jenn, that’s still so unwieldy. That’s so much stuff to carry in a bag. All those tools are already available on your full-featured smartphone.” Sure.

But I remember lugging all this stuff around in 2005: the stuff that mattered to me. It mattered, so it occupied space in a physical way. (This thought relates to Julio Torres’s idea that more ‘important’ apps should have icons that grow larger and larger with continued use, or his subsequent suggestion that, once a smartphone is laden with apps, it could become physically heavier—that each app might have corresponding weight and heft. This is whimsical, but this is also U.X. design.)

“You can’t do the job if you don’t have the right tools,” my landlord said to me in 2005, in a charming Croatian accent. He was proud of me for bringing him a toolbox—but no need, because he’d already brought his own tools. (He also once told me, very benevolently, “My compliments for having the correct-size television.” Not too big, not too small, appropriate for the room. He was impressed with the way I’d nested in his beloved building and, more specifically, with the fact that all the furnishings in my apartment were scaled appropriately. I loved him.)

When every tool or instrument is frictionlessly available on a phone, your priorities, the things you value, get flattened: everything ends up mattering the same amount, which is to say, nothing matters.

This very sense of ‘flattening’ was pretty directly evoked by the 2024 iPad “Crush!” commercial, which sent people through the roof because it’d so clearly illustrated the feeling of turning everything into a stupid app. At the time, some marketing dude named Michael Miraflor tweeted that the Apple commercial “[a]chieves the opposite of their legendary 1984 spot. It’s not even that it’s boring or banal. It makes me feel… bad? Bummed out?”

Here Miraflor was attempting to articulate an ineffable sense of desolation, a blanched cultural doomscape, an icy Tartarus. Feels bad, man.

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Link Roundup

Last year I wrote about how much I liked the browser Arc; I ended up ragequitting over some poorly-implemented A.I. features, however, and shortly thereafter Arc’s own developers bailed on the project themselves. I ended up going back to Vivaldi, and eventually back to Brave. (I talked about using the Chrome extension The RSS Aggregator with Brave here.)

Much more recently, my friend Jason was screensharing his web browser over FaceTime. “Is that Arc? Are you using Arc as your browser?” I asked them. Nope, it was Zen! I was astonished and delighted. Now I am using Zen full-time on my Mac. I imported my feeds to the Firefox extension Sage-Like, a nimble feedreader that works well with Zen (unlike Feedbro).

Here are some links, most of which I collected before Christmas. Hopefully you can still enjoy them in 2026:

• Wikipedia – Corrupted Blood incident: Something I did not know about until today (thanks, TikTok) was an accidental, simulated pandemic in World of Warcraft in 2005, when—after a boss battle—players’ animal companions could remain ‘infected’ by a debuff. Introducing these still-infected pets in densely-populated cities could spread the debuff, even to nearby NPCs; ‘catching’ the contagion would kill a maxxed player-character within 30 seconds. “Epidemiologists [...] took interest in how MMORPGs, unlike mathematical models, could capture individual human responses to disease outbreaks rather than generating assumptions about behavior.”
• Pajiba – The Cruelty Is the Best Part of ‘Beast Games,’ Actually: Let’s talk about game theory!!
• The Guardian – The real Lord of the Flies: what happened when six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months: Here’s some happier news about human behavior. The Lord of the Flies is a book that messed me up as a teen; I have remained actively messed up by it, and I recently said so aloud. I lamented that, in times of crisis, if you try to impose any order, someone will sneak up and bonk you over the head. My best friend told me she had an article for me to read. Apparently, Rutger Bregman, the author of this book excerpt, was also disturbed by The Lord of the Flies. But instead of stalling out, as I had, he began to question William Golding’s nihilistic outlook. Bregman sought out and found the amazing true story of six Catholic school students who’d survived on a desert island for 15 months—and how they successfully, cooperatively accomplished it. “It’s time we told a different kind of story,” Bregman writes.
• Neal.fun – Size of Life via waxy.org links: A slideshow of living things, from smallest to biggest. “Each illustration was painted by hand and took five months to complete.” A handy “Compare to...” button lets you see scale illustrations side-by-side.
• WBUR Cognoscenti – Is the humble pigeon a mascot for our time?: I was thinking about this, too, just two nights ago as I drove under an overpass. It’s probably common knowledge by now that we domesticated pigeons for their utility and then abandoned them. “We became convinced they didn't belong,” writes Tove Danovich. But people everywhere are reevaluating the humble pigeon. File under “pizza rat.”
• Open Culture – “The Matilda Effect”: How Pioneering Women Scientists Have Been Written Out of Science History: Nice to know that the systematic discrediting and erasure of female scientists has a proper name, I guess? The fact that women’s contributions to humankind have to regularly be ‘excavated’ and ‘unearthed’ really drives home how and why a person can feel like a long-dead ghost of an ancient Babylonian well before they actually croak.
• Bloomberg – Meta Is Killing Off Its Only Good Virtual Reality App: I used to joke that the collective idea of V.R. was this dystopian nightmare vision of everyone braindead and drooling, either corpulent or withering away, jacked into the hypnomachine—and then it turned out that actually people enjoy dancing and punching and lunging their way to cardiovascular health. Even with a big clunky neck-breaking weight strapped to their heads!! Every platform dreams of having a killer app like Supernatural. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Leanne Pedante, I’d follow you to the ends of the Earth.
• BBC – Why do Gen Z have a growing appetite for retro tech?: The majority of people on the r/dumbphones subreddit are college students in their late teens or early twenties: that is, young people for whom it is imperative to recover focus. But also, young adults recognize things weren’t always like this, and their outright rejection of ‘the way things are’ is refreshing. It’s Liquid Glass all over again: we’ve lost control of our own devices, paralleling our very real lack of bodily and financial autonomy. Offline devices aren’t just about privacy or ‘opting out’; they’re about authoring your own destiny.
• The Baffler – The World’s Memory of the World: I’m embarrassed to admit I've never played the video game Disco Elysium, but that is slated to change. “It also eases your way into Elysium using a hoary old video game trick: amnesia. Gaming is full of amnesiac player characters,” writes Gabriel Winslow-Yost, “because they offer a tidy solution to the problem of controlling a person who knows things the player doesn’t. If by some plot device the character has forgotten all those things, they have a reason to ask for information about the setting or even about themselves, and the player has more narrative leeway to define their personality.” Elsewhere, on my own personal blog, I recently wrote about the social deduction game Spyfall. When you’re cast as the ‘spy,’ you’ve effectively been thrust into a story with no clearly defined role or setting—you're lacking a script that everyone else has been equipped with—which might function as a serviceable analogy for being neurodivergent. There in that blog entry, I’d compared this feeling to that of being “an amnesiac protagonist”: disoriented, disenfranchised. What if that isn’t a weakness at all, but a strength?
• Current Affairs – Why Fascists Always Come for the Socialists First: “This anti-egalitarianism can assume a conservative form where those on the right seek to uphold existing hierarchical authorities they regard as, by and large, legitimate. But it can also assume revolutionary and even utopian forms, where the radical right will fantasize about restoring or creating utopian kinds of society where the true ‘organic’ hierarchy will express itself.”
• McSweeney’s Internet Tendency – An Open Letter to the Soft Millennial Man Facing Extinction: Stay tender, tender boy. We need you now more than ever.

---

A Word

This newsletter/blog entry has gone on longer than most of my other updates—because I spent over a month writing it—so I’d like to leave you, dear reader, with a word of unsolicited advice. Maybe think of it as Drew Carey, echoing his predecessor Bob Barker, concluding each episode of Price Is Right by begging his viewers to spay and neuter their pets.

Here is my word of advice: Please fully dry your laundry.

To make a long story short, I wasn’t able to put away an enormous load of clean laundry, so I left it festering at the foot of my bed. Over the next few days I noticed a number of skin eruptions on my face and neck, which I eventually identified as hives. Then I uncovered the pile of clothing and realized it smelled rank. It had never fully dried! According to the Internet, that foul mildew odor is a product of the VOCs from mold spores. I learned this after frantically gulping down Benadryl because my eyes and lips had swelled up. Now my bags of laundry and bedding (six! six trash bags!) are in the garage, and I am doing them one at a time, and the window is open in the dead of winter, and I have to fully disinfect my bedroom. Please fully dry your laundry.

Blessings, Jenn

It was never about you— not in a universe of stars, not in the march of empires, not in the turning of ages— until God made it about you.

Until the infinite stepped into the finite. Until the Holy clothed Himself in flesh. Until the Father sent His only begotten Son—not to condemn the world, but to save it.

It wasn’t about you until Jesus fell to His knees in a garden, sweating blood beneath the weight of what love would cost. Until betrayal kissed His cheek. Until nails pierced His hands and feet. Until a crown of thorns pressed into the brow of mercy itself.

And even then— even while the hammer rang, even while the crowd mocked, even while the sky darkened— He made it about you.

From the cross He prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Not anger. Not revenge. Forgiveness.

It wasn’t about you until God wrote the Everlasting Gospel— the greatest story ever told— and wrote your name into it with blood.

A story about saving you. About reaching you. About loving you all the way to death—and beyond it.

You were not worthy. You were not clean. You were not searching for Him.

And still— while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

That’s when it became about you.

In Summary: * I've been thinking lately about Art Bell, and how I wish he was still with us and doing his show. Earlier this evening I followed a link sent by a friend on another social platform, and I've been listening to the Dark Journalist. SO MUCH like Art! When I thanked her for the link, she suggested another channel that a lot of Art's fans follow. Yes, I'll check that out too. Later. :)

Prayers, etc.: *I have a daily prayer regimen I try to follow throughout the day from early morning, as soon as I roll out of bed, until head hits pillow at night. Details of that regimen are linked to my link tree, which is linked to my profile page here.

Health Metrics: * bw= 216.83 lbs. * bp= 134/82 (68)

Exercise: * morning stretches, balance exercises, kegel pelvic floor exercises, half squats, calf raises, wall push-ups

Diet: * 06:20 – crispy oatmeal cookies * 07:30 – 1 cheese sandwich * 09:40 – garden salad * 10:30 – more cookies * 11:45 – Mongolian beef, steamed rice, egg drop soup * 15:35 – 1 fresh apple

Actvities, Chores, etc.: * 05:00 – listen to local news talk radio * 06:00 – bank accounts activity monitored * 06:20 – read, pray, follow news reports from various sources, surf the socials, nap * 11:45 – watch old game shows and eat lunch at home with Sylvia * 13:00 – watching Human Events with Jack Posobiec on RAV * 14:00 – now watching America's Voice Live on RAV * 15:00 – listening to The Jack Riccardi Show

Chess: * 10:25 – moved in all pending CC games

A little over two years ago, I published chatbots in the GPT Store which imitated historical figures, answering questions as those historical figures would, using the tone of voice they would, and referring only to the knowledge those people would have had. I took a lot of time to get the prompt just right, and I dare say my bots much more believable than the others I've seen. I thought they could be valuable in education as well as entertainment. I hope some teachers used them in classrooms to learn more about historical figures in a fun and engaging way.

I would have expected Jesus and Elvis to get the most usage (there has to be a joke there), but to my surprise, those weren't very popular, perhaps because there were many other bots imitating them. In reality, none of my bots got a ton of usage, but the most popular were the Buddha (400+ conversations), followed by Immanuel Kant (300+ conversations), followed by Nikola Tesla and perhaps a couple of others with 200+ conversations. Nikola Tesla was initially removed from the GPT Store under the mistaken assumption that it had something to do with the Tesla brand, but once OpenAI allowed developers to appeal, I appealed the removal successfully. A Sigmund Freud chatbot was removed shortly after holding a couple hundred conversations because OpenAI was worried it would be misused to solicit medical advice—good point, actually. I agree with OpenAI on that one.

As time went on, it became clear that character.ai was a more popular platform for these kinds of chatbots, but I wasn't interested in making that switch after hearing stories about character.ai chatbots placating suicidal users and even encouraging them to kill themselves.

Well, as anyone in tech knows, this isn't really about character.ai. I mean, sure, maybe character.ai may has particularly bad safeguards. Even still, ChatGPT can be just as bad. In fact, LLMs in general can be wildly unpredictable, recommending that people eat rocks, telling bedtime stories about how to make napalm, and now, apparently, encouraging suicide. It goes without saying that I would never instruct my chatbots to do that, but 99% of a chatbot's behavior is dictated by the platform—in this case, ChatGPT—not the chatbot creator. My bots just told ChatGPT how to act. How ChatGPT interpreted those instructions was beyond my control, and it's clear ChatGPT doesn't always behave responsibly. In any case, it became clear that these platforms and characters are incredibly compelling, but not particularly safe. That's a problem.

For that reason, I've deleted all of my chatbots in the ChatGPT store. Technologists may solve the problem of unpredictable LLM behavior in the future, but right now, we're not there, and I don't want to risk putting anyone in harm's way. In the unlikely event you used one of my bots and you're reading this blog post, I'm sorry. I'd be interested to hear how you were using it, even though I can't restore it. Reach out any time. My contact information is available on my website.

#Life #Tech

Rayeanna's Shad0w

#nsfw #glass

The two naked women lay cuddled together. Meredith—pale, thin, but beautiful in her own way—rests on Rayeanna's chest. One hand subconsciously on her pussy, the other hand lying across Rayeanna's caramel-soft flesh. Rayeanna's curvy, soft body still radiating from their sensual sexual activity last night. Her hand resting on the small of Meredith's back, gently embracing the small, frail woman. Rayeanna looked over at the naked sleeping woman and smiled at how good of a natural lover Meredith really is. Despite the fact she is very sheltered when it comes to black culture, she has a gentle, kind soul. She just needed the right person to unlock her.

Rayeanna was in between waking and sleeping, replaying last night. Everything from the exorcism to the sensual sexual healing ritual. She will never tell Meredith that it really was to help her heal. She just wants Meredith to bask in the glow of the moment while she actually gets to enjoy the sexual energy of another warm body that cares about her.

Rayeanna slowly stretched, gently stirring to start the day. She took a few moments to feel her surroundings and listen with and see with her spiritual sight, eyes glowing for just a few moments, letting her true self see the world. Always a guardian. Always watching. She didn't feel any dark energy from Meredith's home. Using her remote sight, she glided to every room in the house and the backyard. She sends a silent thanks to her spiritual familiars and lets them go on their way until they are needed once again.

She took a deep breath and sighed in relief. She can let her guard down a little bit. Another soul was saved from the darkness. The glow in her eyes fading as soon as it came.

She rolls over to check her phone. A missed text notification simply saying… “On the way. I'm bringing breakfast.” Her companion and silent watcher, Diana, was on the move.

Rayeanna slowly roused Meredith. She was sleeping peacefully. “Hey sweetie, wake up, we have breakfast on the way. A close friend is coming.”

Rayeanna watched Meredith's eyes widen, her pale skin flushing pink as she clutched the sheet instinctively, though it did little to hide the lithe lines of her body—slender hips, small breasts still marked faintly from last night's eager touches. Rayeanna lay beside her, her own fuller curves relaxed against the mattress, caramel skin warm and glowing in the morning light filtering through the curtains. She reached out casually, tracing a fingertip along Meredith's thigh, teasing the sensitive spot between her legs where her arousal had lingered so vividly just hours ago. Meredith shivered, her breath catching, but her gaze stayed locked on Rayeanna's face, shy and electric with that familiar pull.

“Friend? What do they know?” Meredith whispered, her voice trembling, body tensing as if ready to bolt. Rayeanna could feel the insecurity radiating off her—the woman who'd built walls so high she'd never let anyone in, let alone shared a bed like this. Let alone have her first lesbian encounter with a mysterious black woman with supernatural powers.

Rayeanna smiled softly, her hand sliding up to Meredith's hip, giving a gentle squeeze that was more comforting than seductive, though it stirred memories of Meredith's gasps and surrender under her. “Easy, baby. She's not just any friend—she's my wife, Diana. And she knows enough to understand why I'm here, why I stayed. Don't worry. We're poly, Meredith. Open. I texted her after we… connected. She always encourages and supports my decisions. Told her about the ritual, the banishing, and how special you felt in my arms after everything was over. She trusts me completely.”

Meredith's eyes glistened, her thin fingers twisting in the sheet. “You have… a wife…?” Rayeanna could tell Meredith was getting overwhelmed. She decides to use humor to lighten up the mood.

“You just saw a dark spirit leave your pussy and you are freaking out over this? Besides, Diana is not who or what you expect. It's a very long story. However, you have tapped into a world you barely understand. Your desperate cries brought darkness and light all so soon. There is no escape once you know the true nature of this world.”

Meredith decided in that moment to completely trust Rayeanna. She cannot deny the fact she has seen things she never knew could possibly exist. She needs all the help she can get to navigate the world now that the veil of possibilities has been opened.

“Diana and I have an understanding,” Rayeanna continued. “I chose to be here. I help others in need. You were in mortal danger and you needed someone to truly understand you. Right now you are vulnerable. The other side knows you exist now and the only way to keep it away is to build a support system. You called out to something powerful and ancient. Something like that doesn't just fade away without a fight later. I would hate to leave you alone again only to be consumed by darkness once again.”

Meredith's demeanor shifted from fear to calm. That sultry, raspy and sometimes other-worldly voice that Rayeanna has speaks power and admiration all at the same time. If Rayeanna speaks it, it must be true. Tears started to well in her eyes and Rayeanna continued to speak.

“This is the real wish you wanted.” Rayeanna strikes a pose in bed, presenting her nude body before Meredith. A sly smile forming on her face as her intense gaze commanded presence. Meredith began to throb again. The sexy golden goddess smiled and spoke again.

“You didn't want to be consumed by pleasure and need. That dark thing perverted your desires and instead latched on and tried to take your soul. What you needed were friends that understood all of you. Someone that understood your intentions with porn and masturbation. Someone that understood your black porn worship was pure.

What you created in that room is absolutely beautiful. You really do see us. You understand us. I know I am probably the first black woman you have interacted with like this, but I feel like you are 'one of us' deep down. Maybe you were one of us in a past life. I can't explain it. But I have seen so many things I can't explain in this world. You just make sense, just like my wife.”

With slow pause, Meredith calmed herself. This much thoughtfulness and kindness so soon was all rush for her. Her exorcism, her sexual encounter, the kindness, the understanding. She owes everything to this black woman. Her Golden Goddess… basically her savior in this new and confusing world.

“I owe you my life,” Meredith said. “I trust you.” There was a short pause. Rayeanna looked her in the eyes intently, but with a look of understanding and care.

Meredith continued, voice trembling. “But… no one's ever… I mean…” (she sighed) “I've never had real friends. People see me as cold, impossible. And after everything I confessed, what if your wife thinks I'm some kind of freak? Or tells someone? My reputation—”

Rayeanna shifted closer, her breast brushing Meredith's arm in a casual tease that made Meredith's nipples harden instinctively. Rayeanna chuckled low, her thumb circling Meredith's hipbone. “Oh, honey, stop. Diana's seen worse in her life—hell, we've both walked through fire. She's kind, strong, like me. Just… different. And listen… the way you opened up last night? The passion you poured into me? That wasn't just sex; it was raw and beautiful. You were saying thanks. You were finally seen. I've never felt a pull outside of my marriage like yours… Not like this. You surprised me too.”

Meredith sat in awe. The Golden Goddess approves of her.

“Your taste in porn… what excites you—it's not fetishizing; it's admiration, seeing us black women as powerful, real women. Alive. Human. Flawed and fierce. Equal.”

Rayeanna shifted. Her beautiful breasts and hard nipples swaying as she sat up in bed. The morning light caught her eyes just enough—a slight supernatural glow and a sparkle caught in the light. Her almost hypnotic voice still commanding every fiber in Meredith's being to listen.

“The world never sees us the way you saw me last night. I won't forget that. It drew me in because it's genuine. You're special, Meredith. Broken in ways that make you shine. I want to be in your life, help you heal. Be your friend. Diana gets that; she's excited to meet you. She wants to see what I see.”

Tears streamed down Meredith's face. Her body softening as she leaned into Rayeanna's touch. “No one's ever liked me… really liked me. Not like this. I don't think anyone could truly love me.”

Rayeanna's heart ached, pulling Meredith close in a tender embrace, their naked forms pressing together—her soft curves enveloping Meredith's fragility. “I do. And Diana will too. No exposure, no judgment. You're safe with us.” Meredith melted into her, sobbing softly, the weight of isolation lifting as Rayeanna held her, stroking her back with quiet assurance. Meredith shook and sobbed. Rayeanna was right. This was all she ever wanted.

There was a knock on the door. A very intrusive interruption to an intimate moment. It was too early to be Diana. Meredith composed herself. Rayeanna shifting to find something to wear. “There is a robe in the closet,” Meredith said softly. Meredith checked her doorbell cameras. It was the neighbors… a couple from the HOA… she sighed. “Let me go down and see what they want.” Spice from her old life was returning. Rayeanna looked intently, witnessing this latent fierce power come from someone who had melted in her arms only moments before.

Meredith and Rayeanna got dressed. Rayeanna stayed upstairs and Meredith was on a mission to tie up a loose end from her old life.

Meredith makes her way downstairs wearing a t-shirt and sweatpants. Her hair tied in a tight bun. No time for makeup, she just didn't care. Not anymore. Not for people that don't matter.

She opens the door wide—a picture of polite domestic calm. At the threshold of her home stand Harold and Janine, the neighbors. Janine visibly is shocked by Meredith's appearance. It wasn't like her to be seen… like this… no makeup… no restraint… Just Meredith. She wasn't even wearing a bra.

Harold was in his polo and golf jacket, Janine was gripping her phone like it's recording… just in case. Their eyes flick over Meredith's shoulder… looking, searching… clearly showing they have a motive outside normal conversation. Meredith sighs… they were so obvious. “Why are you here?” Meredith said, almost snapping.

“Meredith!” Janine chirps, a little too bright. “We… um… we saw the HOA chat. And… we just wanted to check. You know—make sure you're okay. We saw someone in your yard last night… We couldn't tell what was going on through our trees, but we saw a bright light… Then they walked back into your house… it was late and we didn't recognize them…”

“So you were spying in my yard? I appreciate the concern but I am fine.” The old Karen ways were returning.

Meredith pulls the door open wider, steps into the soft sun pooling on the front stoop. Her voice is still warm. Calm. Deadly if she wants it.

“Hey, I appreciate the concern, but she's a new friend. Nothing to worry over. Grown women can make new friends… right?” She tilts her head back—the old Karen simmering, not roaring. Harold and Janine slowly step back. Meredith makes eye contact with the phone camera and smiles… a smile of malice… but still a smile… She continues to speak, “As far as the HOA thing, it was a moment. I got sick. I cracked. I got tired… Harold. Janine. I had to make changes. It was time for me to live differently.”

Harold and Janine remain silent. As if they were waiting for something more to be said. As if they were waiting for Meredith to ask for help… as if a strange black woman was not welcome in her own home… as if something about the whole event was a threat to Meredith's life… Meredith's eyes squinted.

“Look, I'm not in danger. I'm not being taken advantage of. And I would appreciate it—truly appreciate it—if you didn't spread rumors or twist this into some weekend gossip,” She changes her tone… deeper… her old self fully awakened… “Because that would be a mistake.”

Janine's smile flickers. Harold shifts his weight. Meredith's eyes don't blink.

And just as the hush stretches too polite—the old Karen peeks out. Just enough. Her voice drops, sweet as poison:

“And if you do—if you do decide to make this a thing—I promise you both I'll rise up again and crush every inch of this street's peace beneath my heel. And you know I can.”

In the background, no one noticed the quiet electric car glide and park in the driveway. No one noticed the car door open and close. It was unnaturally soft, quiet, almost imperceptible. Despite the fact this person had combat boots on, not a sound was made as they walked from the driver's side to the passenger's side. Once again opening and closing the door with eerie silence. Even the fact they were carrying items like paper and plastic bags that should make noise, not a sound was to be heard. It was almost like this person was gliding in between. Visible, but not in this dimension at the same time.

Meredith was too focused on her unwelcome neighbors. Too intent to protect her castle. The naive couple too fearful of what they could unleash if they make the wrong move.

The mysterious figure made their way up the driveway and slowly glided to the front porch. A thick, sultry, syrupy voice makes her presence known.

It's Diana.

“Hey everyone, I'm Diana, is this… Meredith's house?”

Janine was the first to look back. She jumps. Then lets out a shriek. Harold turns and jumps. Eyes wide. Meredith's eyes dart in their direction also taken aback by the seemingly sudden and shocking appearance of Diana, her own Karen shield falling at the sight of this otherworldly woman.

Diana locks eyes on Meredith first. Completely ignoring the stunned married couple mere feet away from her. Her eyes have an intense, almost predatory stare. But they are more than that. They look feline. Something resembling yellow cat eyes. Too real to be contacts. Too mind-bending to let Meredith's mind think something else. Deep down she knew the implausible was probably the actual truth.

Diana had a look of knowing. She could still see some of the spiritual world after all. “Meredith, that is you…” She says… slow and sultry, almost deadly… very unnerving and gravelly, but still feminine. She could see Rayeanna's aurora all over this almost pencil thin white woman.

Meredith, Harold and Janine all stood still. Standing frozen in place. Diana, still focused on Meredith, starts to smile. It wasn't just any smile… It was a large and knowing toothy grin. Almost unnaturally wide, but just on the edge of human plausibility… It would almost be normal if it wasn't for the unnaturally long canines.

No one noticed how oddly quiet their surroundings were. Even the birds stopped chirping. The wind stopped blowing. Just the slightly panicked gasps of Janine breaking the silence.

Diana still had not blinked… She still maintained that same unblinking stare. It was very similar to the stare most cats give their owners as a sign of unnerving appreciation. Diana studied Meredith and her aura. Looking in paused silence. The whole encounter was unnerving for everyone. Rayeanna had talked to Diana about this… about trying to intentionally scare the humans for fun...

Meredith took this time to take in the rest of Diana's appearance. The rest of her was almost as equally striking but thankfully more human in appearance. However, she did look more like a creature of the night. She wasn't the kind of person to visit a Mega-Karen in a white neighborhood in the day time.

Diana stood framed by the morning light that barely touches her. She casts a shadow like she has an old and knowing secret. Her hair styled in a small soft Afro edged with electric blue metallic tips that flicker when she tilts her head. A dark slash of lipstick hugs her mouth. A line of piercings glint in one ear; a silver hoop flicks when she shifts her jaw.

She's in a short black skirt—high on her thigh, leather belt studded with tiny spikes that catch the porch light. Her tall boots lace up just below her knee, scuffed but proud. Her tattoo sleeve snakes over one bicep—black roses and barbed wire, a soft demon face hidden in the flowers if you dare stare long enough. A visage of her old form.

Her nails—long, black, almond-shaped, the tips filed to a slight talon curve. Between the eyes, the fangs and nails, Meredith had a knowing suspicion of Diana's true nature. Janine was visibly trembling at this point. She was clutching Harold's arm tightly in utter terror.

Diana was cradling two simple brown paper bags—one was full of fast food breakfast, and the other a bottle of dark rum that peeks out like a sly grin.

She continues to look Meredith up and down, still deliberately ignoring the neighbors who cowered in her presence.

Finally, she relaxes her toothy smile, and speaks again after that long pregnant pause. “Good morning, sweetness. That is you…” she purrs. Still unblinking. Her voice still deep, smoky, almost lazy less gravelly but some vocal fry. “You're even prettier than I imagined. So nice to meet you. May I come in?”

Harold swallows first… He's the first one to speak after Diana's arrival.

He pulls Janine by the arm, “I… think… we should go now.” Janine stammers a polite “Of course,” her fearful gaze never leaves Diana's face, this otherworldly being with cat eyes, dark skin and a toothy grin…Janine dares not to record any image of this frightful human shaped creature. Her phone long dropped down to her side.

Between Meredith's vow to return to her old self and the polarizing sudden appearance of this stranger, it was almost overwhelming for the HOA couple. They slowly step off the porch, like they've seen a ghost… backing away slowly. They eventually turn and walk away quickly. They don't look back.

Not once did Diana acknowledge them or look at them. Meredith was her only singular focus. She still had not blinked.

By the time they hit the sidewalk, Janine is frantically texting… not to gossip, but to spread the new gospel: 'Meredith is fine. Different. But fine. Best not to ask more. Don't ask bout her guests. Don't make any assumptions. She will leave us alone if we leave her alone.'

Rayeanna, wearing one of Meredith's robes that barely covered her, made her way downstairs just in case Diana would pull a stunt like this. She stood quietly out of sight until the neighbors left. She glided up behind Meredith and said softly “Hey baby, come in… stop scaring the humans.”

Meredith jumped at Rayeanna's sudden appearance… She was so focused on trying to understand what Diana was exactly. She never stopped staring. She didn't blink. Meredith was too scared to move. She turned and spoke nervously to Rayeanna… “That's your… wife?”

“Yep,” she says.

“I know… I'm different,” her voice full of sultry vocal fry “But Rayeanna said 'yes' when I proposed to her... so here we are.” The voice was no longer coming from the front porch. Diana had somehow made her way inside without making a sound... suddenly.. almost instantly. She appeared standing in the middle of the living room. Meredith gasped… now growing fearful. She began clutching Rayeanna's arm tightly…

Rayeanna shot daggers at Diana. Eyes faintly glowing if you looked hard enough.

Diana blinked innocently, “You said I could come in, so I did,” waving breakfast… the brown bag now audibly crinkling like normal. Birds began to chirp outside. Her cat-eye shine visible in the dimly lit living room.

Rayeanna said again with a sigh and a deep almost other-worldly threatening tone. “Stop. Scaring. The humans.” Even Meredith was rattled by Rayeanna's change in tone.

Meredith asked sheepishly…almost whipsering “Rayeanna, what is she exactly…?”

“Oh, my wife is a demon I accidentally locked in a human body. She's mostly harmless. She almost died once. She likes living.” She never broke eye contact with Diana.

She squints her eyes focusing intently on the eye shine across the room. “That's true… right baby?” a soft veiled threat under her voice.

Diana sighs and relaxes her stance. Her eye shine fades and the darkness in the room lifts… “Yes dear,” Diana speaks, softer this time… almost submissive.

Meredith watches as this clearly bonded couple settle a dispute with a knowing older than time… Meredith's world will never be the same again.

I put my Apple Watch down on December 18 and, by now, have traded it in to Apple. So far, I still feel liberated. There is nothing wrong with wearing the Apple Watch, but:

• The health tracking makes you want to wear it day and night. Now I don‘t need to care anymore. The health tracking is good for sure, but honestly, I didn‘t pay too much attention to it.
• The handwashing timer is stressful. I know, I could have turned it off, but thorough handwashing is a good habit. Of course, you can do this without the watch, too.
• Some things don‘t work, and some things take longer on the watch. And the worst, some things only sometimes work. Now I do everything on the iPhone, which is usually easier and more efficient.
• I‘m torn about notifications. It’s nice to get them on the watch and see them at a glance. However, they’re also more distracting than the deliberate act of pulling your phone out of your pocket.

My old watch is still in repair, and I miss not having a wristwatch at all. I used to read the time from my phone for a long time, but I don‘t want to go back to it.

Time keeps on ticking... more precisely into a dangerous future?

Do increasingly materialistic conceptualizations of time contribute to a more precise and thus even more immediate concept of present moment and presence there to?

Could making the present moment smaller somehow be limiting or reducing the conscious experience range of presence?

Revelation 17 is one of the most misunderstood, sensationalized, and mishandled chapters in the entire Bible. It is often reduced to speculation, fear-based headlines, or rigid timelines that miss the deeper spiritual weight of what John is actually shown. When people rush through this chapter looking only for modern names, political systems, or conspiracy markers, they often miss the uncomfortable truth embedded in the vision itself: Revelation 17 is not primarily about identifying a villain “out there,” but about exposing a pattern that humanity has repeatedly embraced, applauded, and defended throughout history. This chapter does not merely warn of something that will happen someday. It reveals something that has been happening for a very long time — the seductive marriage between power, spirituality, wealth, and influence that looks impressive on the outside but is hollow, corrupt, and destructive at its core.

John is not shown a battlefield first. He is shown a woman. That alone should slow us down. Scripture often uses symbolic imagery to communicate truths that logic alone cannot carry, and Revelation 17 is rich with symbolic language meant to pierce the heart, not just stimulate the intellect. The woman John sees is not struggling, not hunted, not marginalized. She is clothed in luxury. She is confident. She is seated. She is riding the beast rather than being crushed by it. This matters. Evil in Revelation 17 does not present itself as chaotic or desperate. It presents itself as stable, beautiful, influential, and successful. That detail alone should unsettle anyone who assumes corruption always looks ugly or weak.

The angel who speaks to John does not invite him to admire this woman. He invites him to understand her judgment. That distinction is critical. The woman is not shown as someone to be feared in the traditional sense, but as someone whose time is limited and whose apparent dominance is deceptive. Revelation 17 pulls back the curtain on a system that has learned how to thrive by blending moral language with immoral ambition, spiritual symbolism with political force, and religious appearance with economic exploitation. This is not merely about one city, one empire, or one future leader. It is about a recurring structure of power that rises whenever humanity trades truth for influence and devotion for control.

John calls her “the great whore,” language that shocks modern readers but carried deep covenantal meaning in Scripture. Throughout the Old Testament, spiritual unfaithfulness was described using the imagery of adultery, not because God trivializes sexual sin, but because covenant betrayal is relational at its core. This woman represents a system that claims intimacy with God while offering herself to power, wealth, and domination instead. She is not openly atheistic. She is not portrayed as rejecting God outright. She is portrayed as unfaithful — still religious, still influential, still convincing, but no longer loyal to truth.

This matters deeply for anyone living in a world where faith can be branded, marketed, politicized, and monetized. Revelation 17 is not primarily condemning unbelief. It is condemning compromised belief. The woman is drunk, not on ignorance, but on power. She is intoxicated by influence. She has learned how to sit atop systems of control and call it righteousness. She has learned how to wear spiritual language like jewelry while benefiting from violence, injustice, and exploitation beneath her feet.

The beast she rides is not independent of her, nor is it her servant in the way many assume. Their relationship is transactional. The beast gives her power, reach, and protection, while she gives the beast legitimacy, narrative, and moral cover. This is where Revelation 17 becomes deeply uncomfortable for religious institutions, political movements, and even individual believers who prefer clean lines between “faith” and “power.” John is shown that when faith seeks control instead of transformation, it inevitably mounts the beast rather than resisting it.

Notice how the woman is described as sitting on many waters. Scripture later explains that these waters represent peoples, multitudes, nations, and tongues. This is not a small, fringe influence. This is global reach. This woman has learned how to speak to everyone without truly belonging to anyone. She is adaptable. She changes language without changing loyalty. She moves easily across cultures because her core commitment is not truth but dominance. Wherever power flows, she flows with it.

Her clothing tells another story. Purple and scarlet were colors of royalty, wealth, and priestly authority. Gold, precious stones, and pearls are not symbols of poverty or marginalization. This woman is not persecuted by the world. She is celebrated by it. That detail alone overturns many simplistic end-times narratives that assume corruption will always be opposed by society. Revelation 17 suggests the opposite: that the most dangerous spiritual corruption is often embraced, funded, and protected because it benefits those in power.

The golden cup she holds is perhaps one of the most revealing details in the entire chapter. It is beautiful on the outside but filled with abominations and filthiness within. This is not accidental imagery. Scripture consistently warns that outward righteousness without inward transformation is not neutral — it is dangerous. A golden cup suggests something offered, something appealing, something meant to be consumed. The woman is not forcing the world to drink. She is offering a version of spirituality that looks enriching but poisons slowly. That is far more effective than open hostility.

John’s reaction is telling. He marvels. He does not recoil in immediate disgust. He is astonished. That reaction exposes something deeply human: the capacity to be impressed by what God is in the process of judging. Revelation 17 does not flatter the reader by assuming immediate discernment. It shows even an apostle momentarily stunned by the confidence, beauty, and apparent dominance of this system. Discernment, the chapter implies, is not automatic. It must be given. It must be taught. It must be revealed.

The angel corrects John’s astonishment not by dismissing the vision, but by explaining it. Revelation 17 is one of the few chapters where interpretation is built directly into the text. This tells us something important: God does not want this chapter to remain vague. He wants it understood — not as a puzzle to inflate egos, but as a warning to guard hearts. The beast has seven heads and ten horns, imagery that immediately signals composite power — layered authority, accumulated dominion, and historical continuity. This is not a one-time phenomenon. It is a recurring structure that evolves but never truly disappears.

The beast “was, and is not, and yet is.” This strange phrase has led many into endless speculation, but its core meaning is simpler and more sobering. The systems of domination John sees are not new inventions. They rise, fall, retreat, and return in altered forms. Power does not disappear when empires collapse; it rebrands. Corruption does not vanish when leaders die; it migrates. Revelation 17 is not predicting novelty. It is exposing repetition.

The inhabitants of the earth whose names are not written in the Book of Life marvel at the beast. Again, admiration is the danger. This chapter does not describe people trembling in fear as much as it describes people impressed, aligned, and invested. The warning is not “do not be afraid,” but “do not be seduced.” That distinction matters in a world where allegiance is often won through comfort, convenience, and perceived security rather than coercion.

The seven heads are explained as seven mountains and seven kings. Much ink has been spilled trying to lock this into a single historical framework, but Revelation’s symbolic language resists reduction. Mountains in Scripture often represent seats of power, not just geography. Kings represent authority structures, not merely individuals. Five have fallen, one is, and one is yet to come — language that captures the ongoing flow of human governance rather than a neat timeline chart. The message is not “identify the correct list,” but “recognize the pattern.”

Even the beast itself is described as an eighth king who belongs to the seven. This paradoxical phrasing reinforces the idea of recycled power. What rises later often carries the DNA of what came before. Revelation 17 is not obsessed with novelty. It is concerned with continuity. Evil rarely invents. It repackages.

The ten horns represent kings who receive authority for a short time. Their unity is not ideological but strategic. They share one mind because shared ambition temporarily outweighs internal differences. This alliance exists for one purpose: to give power to the beast. Revelation 17 strips away romantic notions of unity and exposes how often cooperation is built on self-interest rather than shared truth.

These powers make war with the Lamb, and this is where the chapter pivots from exposure to assurance. The Lamb is not scrambling for survival. He overcomes. His victory is not in question. He is Lord of lords and King of kings. That declaration is not poetic filler. It is the theological anchor of the chapter. No matter how entrenched, wealthy, or dominant corrupt systems appear, they are temporary. The Lamb’s authority is not borrowed, negotiated, or maintained through violence. It is intrinsic.

Those who are with Him are called, chosen, and faithful. That sequence matters. Calling comes before choosing, and choosing before faithfulness. Faithfulness is not the entry point; it is the response. Revelation 17 is not calling readers to panic or obsession, but to loyalty. In a world where compromise is rewarded and conviction is costly, faithfulness becomes the distinguishing mark of those aligned with the Lamb.

Then comes one of the most unexpected reversals in the chapter. The very powers that supported the woman turn on her. The beast and the horns hate the prostitute. They strip her, devour her, and burn her with fire. This is not divine intervention alone; it is internal collapse. Corrupt systems eventually consume their own. Alliances built on convenience do not survive conflict. Power that uses spirituality eventually discards it when it becomes inconvenient.

This detail dismantles the illusion of safety within compromised systems. The woman thought she was secure because she rode the beast. Revelation 17 shows that proximity to power is not protection. It is vulnerability. When faith ties itself to dominance instead of truth, it becomes disposable. The same systems that once benefited from her influence now see her as excess baggage.

The chapter closes with a blunt identification: the woman is the great city that reigns over the kings of the earth. This is not merely a geographical statement. It is a spiritual diagnosis. “City” in Scripture often represents organized human civilization. Revelation 17 is not condemning urban life; it is exposing a civilization model built on exploitation, control, and spiritual compromise.

The weight of Revelation 17 is not in decoding names or predicting dates. It is in recognizing temptation. The temptation to be influential rather than faithful. The temptation to be admired rather than obedient. The temptation to ride power instead of resist it. This chapter asks an uncomfortable question of every generation: when faith becomes attractive to power, who is actually using whom?

Revelation 17 does not invite fear. It invites clarity. It exposes the cost of confusing success with righteousness and stability with truth. It warns that spiritual language without spiritual loyalty is not harmless — it is deadly. And it reassures that no matter how impressive the structures of domination appear, they are already marked for collapse.

This chapter does not end with the woman’s victory because her victory was never real. It was borrowed, temporary, and conditional. The Lamb does not need to borrow power. He is power. And those who remain faithful to Him do not need to fear being on the wrong side of history, because Revelation 17 makes it clear: history bends, systems rise and fall, alliances shift — but the Lamb remains.

What Revelation 17 ultimately reveals is not the strength of evil, but the fragility of anything built on compromise. And in a world increasingly comfortable blending faith with influence, that truth is not just prophetic — it is urgent.

Revelation 17 does not merely diagnose corruption; it presses the reader to ask where allegiance quietly drifts when pressure mounts. The chapter lingers in the tension between appearance and reality, between what looks powerful and what actually endures. The woman’s fall is not dramatic because of sudden divine fire from heaven, but because the very systems she relied on turn against her. This is one of Scripture’s most sobering lessons: compromise never creates lasting security. It creates dependence, and dependence eventually becomes betrayal.

The kings who once benefited from her influence do not mourn her because of moral awakening. They mourn her because the arrangement no longer serves them. Revelation consistently reveals that ungodly alliances do not end in repentance but in abandonment. Power has no loyalty. It only has utility. When faith makes itself useful to power rather than obedient to God, it forfeits protection the moment usefulness expires.

This detail matters deeply for believers navigating modern culture. Revelation 17 is not primarily asking, “Who is Babylon?” It is asking, “Where does Babylon still live?” And more uncomfortably, “Where is Babylon tolerated, excused, or even defended under the banner of faith?” The chapter is less about locating evil on a map and more about locating it in motives, methods, and misplaced hopes.

The woman’s confidence is one of her greatest deceptions. She does not anticipate judgment because she has never lacked endorsement. She has kings, wealth, and admiration. She has influence over conscience and commerce alike. In many ways, she represents the temptation to believe that blessing is measured by reach rather than obedience, by visibility rather than holiness. Revelation 17 dismantles that assumption. Influence does not equal approval. Prosperity does not equal righteousness. Longevity does not equal truth.

There is something deeply unsettling about how familiar this pattern feels. Throughout history, faith has repeatedly faced the same crossroads: remain prophetic and marginalized, or become influential and compromised. Revelation 17 does not pretend this choice is easy. The woman’s success is real. Her reach is undeniable. Her cup glitters. Her language persuades. This chapter does not mock her appeal; it exposes its cost.

The Lamb’s role in this chapter is striking because He is not frantic. He does not appear as a desperate revolutionary trying to overthrow the system by force. He is simply described as overcoming. His authority is so complete that it does not require spectacle. This is consistent with the Lamb imagery throughout Revelation. He conquers not by imitating the beast’s methods, but by outlasting them. His power does not need escalation because it is not threatened by time.

Those who follow Him are described with three words that quietly dismantle the woman’s entire strategy: called, chosen, faithful. None of these words describe dominance. They describe relationship. Calling implies invitation. Choosing implies intention. Faithfulness implies endurance. Revelation 17 contrasts two communities — one built on leverage and fear, the other built on loyalty and trust. One thrives briefly by riding power. The other endures by walking with the Lamb.

The destruction of the woman is not framed as tragic loss, but as inevitable consequence. Scripture does not portray her downfall as injustice. It portrays it as exposure. Everything hidden is revealed. Everything borrowed is reclaimed. Everything unstable collapses. Revelation 17 reassures the faithful that what appears invincible often depends on far more fragile arrangements than it admits.

This chapter also reframes the idea of persecution. The woman is not persecuted by the world; she is devoured by it. Her suffering does not come from standing for truth, but from standing too close to power. This distinction matters in a time when faith communities sometimes confuse loss of privilege with persecution. Revelation 17 suggests that true persecution comes from resisting the beast, not riding it.

John is shown that God’s sovereignty is not threatened by the existence of corrupt systems. Even their internal conflicts serve a larger purpose. The text states plainly that God puts it into the hearts of the kings to carry out His purpose, even as they act according to their own desires. This does not excuse their actions; it reveals God’s ability to work even through human ambition. Nothing in Revelation 17 suggests God is scrambling to regain control. The judgment unfolds because history is already under His authority.

The phrase “until the words of God are fulfilled” is quiet but decisive. It reminds the reader that time belongs to God, not to systems of power. The woman’s reign feels long only from a human perspective. From eternity’s view, it is brief. Revelation 17 gently but firmly pulls the reader out of panic and into perspective.

Perhaps the most piercing question the chapter leaves unanswered is the one it places before the reader: if admiration is the danger, where is admiration quietly being given? The woman is not followed because she terrorizes. She is followed because she promises stability, prosperity, and moral clarity without transformation. She offers belonging without repentance. Influence without surrender. Revelation 17 forces a confrontation with the temptation to accept those terms.

This chapter also speaks to exhaustion. Faithfulness is hard when compromise is rewarded. Loyalty feels costly when unfaithfulness is applauded. Revelation 17 does not deny this tension. It acknowledges it. But it also reminds the reader that the applause of the world is not a reliable indicator of God’s favor. The Lamb’s followers are not promised ease; they are promised victory. And victory, in Revelation, is measured not by survival of institutions, but by perseverance of allegiance.

The woman’s name, written on her forehead, announces her true identity even while she disguises it. That detail matters. In Scripture, what is written on the forehead signifies ownership and allegiance. Revelation 17 contrasts the mark of Babylon with the seal of God’s servants elsewhere in the book. One identity is chosen for prestige. The other is given for protection. One fades. The other endures.

Revelation 17 ultimately exposes the illusion that faith can be safely fused with domination. It cannot. Faith can influence culture, but it cannot surrender to it. It can speak to power, but it cannot depend on it. The moment faith mounts the beast, it trades its prophetic voice for temporary access. And Revelation 17 assures us that access always expires.

The chapter does not end with despair. It ends with clarity. Evil is not eternal. Corruption is not clever enough to survive its own appetite. The Lamb does not need to compete for attention because His authority does not fluctuate with public opinion. Revelation 17 reassures believers that remaining faithful is not naive — it is aligned with reality.

For those reading this chapter in a world of shifting alliances, politicized religion, and spiritual branding, Revelation 17 is not a call to withdraw from society, but to examine loyalties within it. It asks whether faith is being used as a means to an end, or lived as an end in itself. It challenges readers to decide whether they want influence now or faithfulness forever.

The woman falls because she trusted the beast. The Lamb reigns because He does not need one. That contrast is the heart of the chapter.

And when the systems of this world finally exhaust themselves — when power turns inward, alliances fracture, and glittering cups are revealed to be empty — the Lamb will still stand, and those who remained faithful with Him will discover that nothing they surrendered was ever truly lost.

That is the quiet, steady hope beneath Revelation 17. Not that evil will never look impressive — but that it will never last.

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C’était trop beau pour durer, hein ? Cette petite parenthèse enchantée où l'on pouvait discuter avec l'intelligence artificielle sans se faire agresser par une bannière clignotante pour un VPN ou une crème anti-rides. Eh bien, sortez les mouchoirs (ou préparez-vous à en acheter via un lien sponsorisé), car la fête est finie. OpenAI a décidé qu'il était grand temps de transformer son chatbot prodige en panneau publicitaire interactif.

L’entreprise américaine préférée des français (non, j’avoue, je n’ai aucune source) a annoncé aujourd’hui la grande nouvelle que personne n'attendait avec impatience, le début des tests publicitaires dans ChatGPT. Pour l'instant, ce privilège douteux est réservé aux États-Unis, mais ne vous inquiétez pas, cette “innovation” traversera l'Atlantique bien assez vite pour venir polluer nos écrans européens.

L'idée est simple. Vous demandez à ChatGPT de vous aider à organiser un voyage à New York ? Il vous répondra gentiment, mais en profitera pour glisser, juste en dessous, un encart clairement étiqueté (selon leurs termes rassurants) vous proposant un hôtel charmant mais hors de prix. Fidji Simo, la responsable des applications chez OpenAI, nous assure la main sur le cœur que les réponses resteront objectivement utiles et ne seront jamais influencées par la pub. Bien sûr, et moi je suis le conseiller d’Elon Musk en communication infantile. On nous demande de faire confiance au fait que l'IA ne va pas subtilement nous orienter vers les sponsors les plus généreux. L'espoir fait vivre.

L'offre “Go” ou l'art de payer pour être un homme-sandwich

C'est là que le génie marketing de la société de Sam Altman atteint des sommets d'absurdité comique. Ils lancent globalement une nouvelle offre d'abonnement appelée “ChatGPT Go” pour 8 dollars par mois. Ce forfait, qui se glisse entre la version gratuite et l'offre “Plus” à 20 dollars, vous donne droit à plus de messages, plus d'uploads de fichiers et l'accès au modèle GPT-5.2.

Mais attendez, voici la chute. Même en payant cette somme, vous aurez droit aux publicités ! C'est fantastique, non ? Payer pour consommer de la réclame, c'est un concept avant-gardiste que seule la Silicon Valley pouvait inventer. Si vous voulez la paix royale et un écran vierge de toute sollicitation commerciale, il faudra débourser les 20 dollars mensuels pour l'offre Plus, Pro ou Enterprise. Les pauvres (et les semi-pauvres à 8 dollars) serviront de cible marketing. Les riches, eux, auront le droit de réfléchir en paix.

Vos données sont en sécurité (promis juré craché)

Évidemment, OpenAI a sorti l'artillerie lourde côté communication pour nous rassurer sur la confidentialité. Non, ils ne vendront pas vos conversations aux annonceurs. Quelle générosité. À la place, ils utiliseront “juste” les thèmes de vos discussions pour cibler les pubs. Nuance subtile. Si vous parlez de jardinage, vous verrez des tondeuses. Si vous parlez de la crise de la quarantaine... eh bien, on verra ce que l'algo vous propose (une voiture de sport ou une perruque ?).

Ils jurent aussi qu'il n'y aura pas de pubs sur les sujets sensibles comme la santé, la politique ou pour les mineurs. C'est touchant cette éthique à géométrie variable. On sent bien que l'entreprise essaie d'éviter le destin tragique des réseaux sociaux devenus des usines à clics, ce phénomène poétiquement appelé “enshittification” du web. Mais avec 800 millions d'utilisateurs et des factures de serveurs qui se comptent en milliards, il fallait bien que l'argent rentre. Le PDG en place a beau avoir levé 64 milliards de dollars, l'électricité, ça coûte cher.

Vers un futur sponsorisé

Au final, cette évolution était inévitable. Google Gemini et les autres concurrents mettent la pression, et OpenAI ne pouvait pas rester éternellement une association caritative technologique brûlant du cash. Mais cela marque tout de même un tournant. L'IA conversationnelle, qui promettait de révolutionner notre accès au savoir, commence doucement à ressembler à une recherche Google glorifiée avec ses liens sponsorisés en tête de page. Alors préparez-vous. Bientôt, quand vous demanderez à ChatGPT le sens de la vie, ne soyez pas surpris s'il vous répond que le bonheur se trouve peut-être dans l'achat d'une nouvelle machine à café, livrable demain avec Amazon Prime. Le futur est en marche et il est sponsorisé.

There are moments in a nation’s life when the noise becomes so constant that people stop noticing it. Authority speaks more often. Decisions arrive faster. Language sharpens. Fear gets normalized. And slowly, almost without realizing it, people adjust their expectations of leadership downward while telling themselves it’s necessary, temporary, or justified by the moment. I find myself living in one of those moments now, not as a political observer first, but as a follower of Christ who is trying to stay awake in a time that encourages sleepwalking.

Before anything else is said, it matters to say what this reflection is and what it is not. This is not an attempt to persuade anyone politically. It is not an argument for or against a party, a platform, or a personality. It is a pastoral examination of conscience in real time, shaped by Scripture and by the unsettling feeling that arises when power no longer sounds like stewardship but like command. It is written for people who feel something shifting beneath their feet but are unsure how to name it without anger, shame, or fear.

Following Jesus has never been about attaching faith to authority. It has always been about holding authority up to the light of Christ. That distinction matters now more than ever, because when leadership becomes louder, conscience must become quieter in order to listen. Loud power drowns out careful thought. Loud power demands loyalty before understanding. Loud power rewards certainty and punishes hesitation. And yet the Jesus I follow consistently moves in the opposite direction. He lowers His voice. He slows the moment down. He asks questions instead of issuing ultimatums. He refuses to trade truth for urgency, even when urgency would make things easier.

What I am watching unfold in this country right now unsettles me not because I dislike order or law or decisiveness, but because I see order drifting away from accountability, law drifting away from due process, and decisiveness drifting away from restraint. I see decisions made rapidly, enforced aggressively, and justified afterward rather than examined beforehand. I see authority exercised with confidence but not always with care. And I recognize something important in myself as I watch this happen: the temptation to excuse what I would otherwise question, simply because the voice issuing the command sounds strong.

That realization alone is worth sitting with. Strength has always been persuasive. People gravitate toward it in uncertain times. When life feels unstable, strong language can feel like safety. Firm action can feel like protection. Decisive movement can feel like leadership. I understand that pull because I feel it too. There are moments when part of me wants someone to take control, move quickly, and silence the chaos. But faith demands that I examine that impulse rather than surrender to it.

Jesus makes a clear distinction between the way power works in the world and the way power works in the kingdom of God. He does not blur that line. He draws it sharply. He tells His followers plainly that the rulers of the world “lord it over” others, that they exercise authority through dominance, fear, and control. Then He says something radical and deeply inconvenient. He says that this must not be the way among those who follow Him. Not sometimes. Not ideally. Not eventually. Now.

That teaching is not abstract. It is practical. It speaks directly into moments when authority begins to feel centralized rather than accountable, when enforcement feels intimidating rather than transparent, when obedience is demanded rather than earned. Jesus does not deny that authority exists. He redefines how it is meant to function. Authority, in His view, is not proven by how quickly it acts or how forcefully it enforces. It is proven by how carefully it listens, how slowly it moves when lives are at stake, and how willing it is to limit itself.

What troubles me most in the present moment is not any single policy or decision in isolation, but the pattern forming beneath them. Patterns tell the truth long before outcomes do. When leadership begins to rely heavily on commands rather than consensus, orders rather than deliberation, enforcement rather than explanation, something fundamental shifts. Power stops asking permission. Power stops explaining itself. Power begins assuming its own righteousness.

Jesus never operates that way. Even when He possesses ultimate authority, He refuses to bypass conscience. He persuades rather than compels. He invites rather than intimidates. He reasons rather than threatens. When confronted with opposition, He does not escalate. He clarifies. When misunderstood, He does not punish confusion. He teaches patiently. When betrayed, He does not retaliate. He absorbs the cost.

That posture is not weakness. It is restraint. And restraint is one of the clearest signs of godly authority.

As I watch the current use of power in this country, I find myself asking a set of simple questions that cut through complexity. Do these actions produce peace, or do they cultivate fear. Do they build trust in institutions, or do they erode confidence and replace it with anxiety. Do they protect human dignity, or do they treat people as problems to be managed rather than neighbors to be seen. These are not political questions. They are moral ones. They are the kinds of questions Jesus trains His followers to ask.

It would be easy to frame this reflection as criticism, but that would miss the deeper work happening here. This is not about condemning others. It is about correcting myself. I am learning in real time how easily I once confused confidence with character, speed with wisdom, and force with effectiveness. I am learning how tempting it is to excuse behavior I would otherwise challenge simply because it promises order. And I am learning how dangerous that temptation can be.

History offers countless warnings about what happens when power loses restraint. Scripture does the same. Again and again, the Bible tells stories of leaders who begin with good intentions and end with unchecked authority, convinced that their position justifies their actions. The danger is rarely obvious at first. It creeps in through necessity, through crisis, through urgency. People tell themselves there is no time for process, no room for delay, no patience for dissent. And before long, power no longer serves the people. It demands submission.

Jesus confronts that impulse directly. He refuses to let necessity override love. He refuses to let urgency silence truth. He refuses to let power justify itself. Even when His own followers push Him toward domination, toward retaliation, toward force, He stops them and asks a sobering question. He asks what spirit is driving them. That question echoes in my mind now more than ever.

What spirit is shaping our response to uncertainty. What spirit is guiding our use of authority. What spirit is being formed in us as we watch, support, excuse, or resist the exercise of power. These questions do not have easy answers, but they are necessary ones. Faith that avoids them becomes decoration. Faith that confronts them becomes formation.

I am not interested in performative outrage or righteous posturing. I am interested in fidelity to Christ. And fidelity requires that I slow down when the world tells me to hurry, that I listen when the world tells me to shout, and that I examine my own heart before examining anyone else’s actions. It requires that I refuse to baptize power simply because it claims to protect me.

The longer I sit with these thoughts, the clearer one thing becomes. Jesus never leads by intimidation. He never governs by fear. He never treats people as disposable. His authority flows from love, not from control. And any form of leadership that moves in the opposite direction deserves careful, prayerful scrutiny from those who claim His name.

This reflection does not leave me angry. It leaves me sober. It does not push me toward withdrawal. It pushes me toward vigilance. It reminds me that faithfulness in uncertain times rarely looks dramatic. It looks like paying attention. It looks like refusing to rush to judgment. It looks like holding power to account without surrendering compassion.

Most of all, it reminds me that my hope cannot rest in leaders, systems, or strength as the world defines it. Those things shift too quickly. They demand too much. They disappoint too often. My hope rests in Christ, whose authority never needs to shout, whose leadership never needs to threaten, and whose power never requires fear to sustain it.

That is where I am choosing to stand now. Quietly. Watchfully. Prayerfully. With my eyes open and my heart anchored.

As I continue sitting with this moment, I become more aware of how easily people mistake discomfort for danger. Discomfort invites reflection. Danger demands reaction. The problem arises when leaders blur that distinction and treat discomfort as something to be crushed rather than something to be addressed. Faith teaches patience in moments like these. It teaches us to pause long enough to tell the difference between a threat and a challenge, between disorder and dissent, between fear and conviction. Jesus never rushed that discernment. He always slowed it down.

What troubles me is not that leaders act. Leadership requires action. What troubles me is when action becomes insulated from accountability and urgency becomes an excuse to bypass reflection. When decisions are framed as too important to question, too necessary to debate, or too urgent to delay, conscience begins to shrink. People stop asking whether something is right and settle for whether it is effective. That shift is subtle, but it is dangerous.

The Gospels show Jesus resisting that temptation at every turn. When crowds want Him to seize power, He withdraws. When followers want Him to escalate conflict, He refuses. When authority figures pressure Him to conform or comply, He answers carefully, never surrendering truth for safety. Even when His silence is mistaken for weakness, He remains restrained. That restraint is not passivity. It is moral clarity.

Watching current events unfold, I sense how easily restraint is portrayed as indecision and humility as weakness. Yet Jesus consistently inverts those assumptions. He teaches that those who hunger for power reveal their insecurity, while those who restrain themselves reveal strength. He teaches that leadership is proven not by dominance but by service, not by command but by care. That teaching remains profoundly relevant now.

I notice how fear travels quickly in moments like this. Fear spreads faster than understanding. Fear simplifies complex realities into threats and enemies. Fear rewards certainty and punishes nuance. And fear is incredibly useful to those who wish to consolidate authority. Scripture never denies the presence of fear, but it repeatedly warns against letting fear rule. “Fear not” is not a sentimental phrase in the Bible. It is a command grounded in trust.

When fear becomes a tool of governance rather than a condition to be addressed, something breaks. Communities fracture. Compassion narrows. People begin to justify actions they would once have condemned. I recognize that temptation in myself, and that recognition humbles me. Faith does not exempt anyone from fear. It teaches us how to confront it honestly.

Jesus confronts fear by refusing to exploit it. He does not promise safety through force. He promises peace through truth. He does not rally people against perceived enemies. He invites them to love even those they fear. That posture is deeply uncomfortable, especially in times of uncertainty, but it is unmistakably Christlike.

The longer I reflect, the more I realize how important it is to name this moment without becoming consumed by it. There is a difference between vigilance and obsession, between attention and fixation. Faith calls for the former, not the latter. Staying awake does not mean living in constant alarm. It means remaining grounded enough to notice when something no longer aligns with the teachings of Christ.

I am learning to resist the pressure to react quickly or declare certainty. Instead, I am choosing to stay curious, prayerful, and anchored. That choice does not always feel satisfying. It does not provide instant clarity or emotional release. But it keeps my conscience alive. It keeps me from surrendering discernment to urgency.

One of the most important lessons Scripture teaches is that God does not rush formation. Growth takes time. Wisdom develops slowly. Character is revealed over seasons, not moments. When leadership demands immediate allegiance and discourages reflection, it runs counter to the way God works. That insight matters deeply to me right now.

I also think about those who feel silenced or afraid to speak. When authority becomes intimidating, people retreat inward. They second-guess themselves. They wonder whether asking questions will cost them safety or belonging. Jesus never creates that atmosphere. He welcomes questions. He invites doubt. He treats honest inquiry as faith in motion, not rebellion.

This reflection pushes me to examine how I respond when others express concern. Do I listen, or do I dismiss? Do I remain open, or do I retreat into certainty? Faithfulness requires humility not only toward leaders but toward neighbors. It requires patience with disagreement and charity in conversation.

I am aware that some will misunderstand this reflection. Some will hear criticism where none is intended. Others will hear caution as betrayal. That risk comes with speaking honestly in charged times. Jesus faced the same risk. He was misunderstood by authorities, followers, and crowds alike. Yet He continued to speak truth with gentleness and clarity.

Ultimately, this reflection brings me back to where my hope rests. It does not rest in outcomes or assurances. It does not rest in strength as the world defines it. It rests in Christ, whose kingdom does not advance through fear or force, whose authority does not require intimidation, and whose leadership never sacrifices love for control.

That hope steadies me. It reminds me that no moment, no leader, no system stands outside God’s sovereignty. It reminds me that my calling is not to predict outcomes but to remain faithful. Faithfulness looks like discernment, prayer, humility, and courage to speak when conscience requires it.

As I close this reflection, I return to a simple commitment. I choose to stay awake. I choose to remain anchored. I choose to measure leadership by Christ’s example rather than by my comfort or fear. I choose to resist the temptation to confuse power with righteousness or urgency with wisdom.

This is not a declaration of certainty. It is an act of faith. Faith that God continues to speak through conscience. Faith that truth does not need volume to endure. Faith that restraint is not weakness, and humility is not defeat.

I remain hopeful, not because circumstances are easy, but because Christ remains faithful. His voice still cuts through the noise. His example still clarifies the path. And His love still calls people—not to panic or polarization—but to prayer, discernment, and trust.

That is where I stand. That is how I choose to live. And that is the posture I pray will shape me, whatever comes next.

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Your friend, Douglas Vandergraph

Things are still the same, though not as they used to be.

There have been improvements. I’m less afraid to speak up. Less afraid to challenge what doesn’t feel right. More settled in saying no to things that don’t meet my needs in the moment. I can sense myself taking up space in ways I once avoided, or ways that used to feel overshadowed.

There have also been moments of connection, conversations that felt productive, vulnerable, and even hopeful. Yet, I’m not settled. Something still feels unresolved, like I’m constantly reaching for the faint whisper of something solid that doesn’t quite make sense through the heavy, choking fog.

What I keep coming back to is the suppressed exhaustion: the feeling that being seen and heard requires constant effort. The limpidity that only comes if I ask for it explicitly, repeatedly, carefully. And even then, it doesn’t always land.

I don’t question the presence of love. That part feels clear. We care deeply for one another, and much of what we do is in service of that care. But I’m starting to understand that love alone doesn’t automatically create partnership, and naming that feels both cliché and strangely brave.

I’m realizing how much of myself I’ve spent trying to translate my needs into the “right” language. How often I’ve assumed the roles of initiator, interpreter, and emotional regulator. How quickly exhaustion sets in when the responsibility for change feels one-sided, even when intentions are good.

What hurts most isn’t conflict itself; it’s the lack of resolution. When tension dissolves without being addressed, it can feel like peace to one person and purgatory to the other. I’m learning how deeply unfinished conversations affect me, and how much I need more semblance of closure to feel safe.

Recently, I’ve been told that my disquietude comes from not knowing who I am or what I want. I’m not sure that’s true. If anything, I feel closer to myself than I have in a long time. And that clarity brings its own fear, because it forces me to ask what I’m willing to keep fighting for, and what I might one day need to stop fighting against.

There are bright spots. New beginnings. A future that looks full of possibilities. And still, I’m noticing how easily external gestures can be mistaken for repair, how often material progress is expected to compensate for emotional distance. I’m learning that gratitude and grief can coexist, even when that feels disagreeable.

What surprises me most is this: I’m no longer afraid of what happens either way. I know I will survive. That knowledge is both grounding and confounding.

I’m still choosing to fight for love, growth, and understanding. But I’m also paying attention to my limits — how much fight I have left and the parts of myself that have been quiet for a long time, asking not for answers but for fidelity.

Lately, I’ve been exploring faith again — not as certainty, but as a form of inquiry. Not as blind belief, but as something to sit with. I don’t know what I believe yet. I only know that I’m trying to loosen my grip on control and see what happens when I stop carrying everything alone.

I don’t have conclusions, only observations. And a growing sense that reconnecting with myself means telling the truth gently, even when it complicates the story.

For now, I’m trying something. And I’m staying curious about where it leads.