Faith Mission Baptist Church

Thank you, Luke.

Delivery

Thank you, Luke.

A Mosquito Drinking the Blood of a Fer-de_Lance

The fer-de-lance (Bothrops asper) is widely considered the most dangerous snake in the Americas, responsible for 50–80% of all snakebites in Central and northern South America.  Its venom is hemotoxic, causing severe tissue necrosis, internal bleeding, and potential organ failure; while untreated mortality was historically 10%, modern antivenom has reduced fatality rates to less than 1%. 

However, survivors frequently suffer gangrene and amputation due to the venom's tissue-destroying effects. 

Geographically, this pit viper is found from southern Mexico to northern South America, including countries like Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, and Venezuela. 

It thrives in tropical rainforests, plantations, and areas near human habitation, often hiding in leaf litter or undergrowth where it can easily encounter people. Its aggressive defensive nature and proximity to human settlements make it particularly lethal compared to other venomous species.

Werewolves of London

[Instrumental Intro]

[Verse 1]
I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand
Walking through the streets of Soho in the rain
He was looking for the place called Lee Ho Fook's
Gonna get a big dish of beef chow mein

[Chorus]
Ah-hoo, werewolves of London
Ah-hoo
Ah-hoo, werewolves of London
Ah-hoo


[Verse 2]
You hear him howling around your kitchen door
You better not let him in
Little old lady got mutilated late last night
Werewolves of London again

[Chorus]
Ah-hoo, werewolves of London
Ah-hoo
Ah-hoo, werewolves of London
Ah-hoo, hu

[Instrumental Break]

[Verse 3]
He's the hairy-handed gent who ran amok in Kent
Lately, he's been overheard in Mayfair
You better stay away from him
He'll rip your lungs out, Jim
Huh, I'd like to meet his tailor

[Chorus]
Ah-hoo, werewolves of London
Ah-hoo
Ah-hoo, werewolves of London
Ah-hoo

[Verse 4]
Well, I saw Lon Chaney walking with the queen
Doing the werewolves of London
I saw Lon Chaney, Jr. walking with the queen, uh
Doing the werewolves of London
I saw a werewolf drinking a piña colada at Trader Vic's
And his hair was perfect
Na!

[Chorus]
Ah-hoo
Werewolves of London
Huh, draw blood, uh
Ah-hoo
Werewolves of London

Frances Bavier (1902-1989)

Beef Jerky (includes casket)

I see in the background a sign or a door that says CASH. Does that mean the funerals, jerky, and cremations must be paid for in cash upfront... or perhaps paid for with cash installments?

Pumpkin with a possum...

or is it a possum with a pumpkin? You decide.

Start a Potato Chip Business

Mother Thalweg's Top 10

 https://lamefrogapplause.blogspot.com/2020/12/mother-thalwegs-top-ten-10th.html?m=0

prepared by Rotifer in 2020. Rotifer might be enticed to come up with a newer list --- perhaps with the help of other FA historians. 

Clay Jones's Doppelgänger

 

Fabio Lazoni

Clay Jones

My father died when he was 44 years old. That means he will always be 44. Fabio Lazoni is not dead. He has aged... like we all do. He also appears to own a white robe, which I am confident he paid for, in part, with the money he made from those "I can't believe it's not butter!"commercials. 

One of Clay's jackass trolls claims that Clay is probably mistaken daily for Fabio. I'm not sure why Clay is being compared to some old romance novel model. He and Snoopy look pretty darn cool and handsome to me. I can only imagine who or what Dondi is mistaken for... a POS, maybe.

Car of the Future (1950)

 

Viafoura moderates the comments on GoComics… NOT GoComics!!!!

 NOT GoComics!!!!  NOT GoComics!!!!

Instead of using the words… client or site publisher… I will say GoComics. 

Instead of saying  “user” or “end user”, I will add the word “victim”.)

Here’s all the pretty words Viafoura says about itself:

“Viafoura employs a hybrid AI and human moderation system known as Moderation Intelligence to ensure brand safety and civility at scale. This system combines AI-powered automated filters with 24/7 human expert oversight, customized to each client's specific community guidelines. The AI component utilizes semantic pattern-based detection and machine learning to analyze user-generated content in real time. It identifies and automatically blocks spam, hate speech, harassment, and toxic content with over 99% accuracy. The system is designed to learn from human overrides, continuously improving its precision and reducing the need for manual moderation as it adapts to the specific nuances of a publisher's audience.” (Insert Church Lady’s… “Well, isn’t that special?”)

I’ll skip most of GoComics’s experience with Viafoura, because… like most companies involved in moderation… they skew positive, presenting themselves to GoComics and other clients as problem-solvers… instead of THE PROBLEM.  Viafoura’s primary motivation is to maintain a good relationship with GoComics (who pays them). Their concern with end-users (who I refer to as “victims”) aren’t even an afterthought. In a nutshell, Viafoura only cares about GoComic’s perspective… and GoComics is itself a proxy for the end-user/“victim’s” experience, not a direct measure of it. The "95% of comments removed, a stat from Viafoura's own blog, is telling in that they acknowledge the vast majority of removals target a victim’s own content, but they never publish the inverse: how many of those removals were wrong. Without an appeal mechanism, that number is unknowable by anyone outside Viafoura’s moderation team.

The absence of an appeal process for victims is arguably the single most important gap — not the false-positive rate (which is tunable per client/GoComics), but the fact that a user who is wrongfully flagged has no path to correction. 

End user/victim complaints are essentially invisible. There is no public record of direct end-user/victim complaints regarding Viafoura's moderation. No Reddit threads, no social media posts, no forum discussions where an individual says “My comment on GoComics got deleted and I don't know why" or "I got banned from GoComics’s comments and I can't appeal." This is expected for a few reasons:

• Users don't know Viafoura exists. They experience it as “GoComics deleted my comment." Any complaint goes to GoComics, not to Viafoura.
• There is no documented appeal mechanism for end users/victims. Viafoura documentation (https://documentation.viafoura.com/docs/user-ban) shows a "message to user" field that moderators can attach to a ban, and the JavaScript API (https://documentation.viafoura.com/docs/viafoura-javascript-api-2) exposes ban_level and a reason string. But there's no "appeal this decision" button, no "request a review" flow, no second-chance mechanism. Compare this to Meta, YouTube, Reddit, and Roblox, all of which have explicit, documented appeal processes with transparency reports.
• The data export documentation tracks comment statuses (disabled, deleted, spammed) and user ban events, but there's no field for "user appealed" or "appeal outcome." The system has no concept of a user/victim-initiated review.

So the "victims" of over-sensitive moderation — the users whose legitimate comments get flagged, whose accounts get banned, whose contributions get ghost-banned (viafoura's ghost ban level allows a user/victim to leave a post, but only the moderators can see it) — have no means to register a complaint, let alone appeal.

Here’s what the experience chain for a victim looks like:

1. End user gets a comment deleted or gets banned. They don't know why. They might try again, get flagged again, and then stop commenting entirely — or they post about it on social media directed at GoComics, not at Viafoura.
2. GoComics notices declining comment volume, gets a buttload of reader/victim emails (“Why did you delete my comment?"), or catches one or two individual cases during their daily moderation review.
3. GoComics files a ticket with Viafoura — and that's when the complaint enters the record, reframed as a product issue ("the AI is too sensitive to X type of content") rather than an end-user/victim experience issue ("I was wrongfully censored and had no recourse").

This means the GoComics/client-side complaint is already filtered, aggregated, and depersonalized by the time it reaches Viafoura. The individual user/victim’s experience of being silenced — the actual harm — is invisible in every public dataset.

What's structurally missing

Dimension	Meta / YouTube / Reddit	Viafoura
User-facing notification with reason	Yes (detailed, per-policy)	"Message to user" field (set by moderator, often generic)
Appeal mechanism	Yes (documented, with SLAs)	None documented
Transparency report (false-positive rate, appeals filed/granted)	Yes (quarterly/annual)	None
User/victim can see why their comment was flagged	Partially (policy citation)	Only if moderator writes a custom message
Ghost ban disclosure	Varies (some platforms disclose)	User is not informed; their posts are hidden

Viafoura's ban levels include a ghost level where "the user is able to perform all normal actions, but their comments and replies are only visible to themselves and moderators." The user/victim has no idea their contributions are invisible to everyone else. They may keep posting, thinking they're participating in a conversation that no one else can see. There's no documented mechanism to notify Viafoura or let a ghosted user/victim appeal.

Viafoura’s user/victim ban levels:

1. Disables the users/victims from submitting any new comments or replies. They will be able to do other engagement activities (likes, follow, report, etc).

2. User/victim is able to perform all normal actions, but their comments and replies are only visible to themselves and moderators.

3. Disabled the user/victim from logging in and performing all actions that require authentication (like, dislike, report, etc).

4. In addition to banning the user/victim, this will ensure all their posts are hidden from view of other users.

5. User is not banned.

A little off-topic, but something that happens in certain moderation companies… they solicit reviews of their service by offering gift cards as an incentive to leave a positive review. (I’m guessing that bad reviews just don’t appear, despite getting a gift card.) To my knowledge, Viafoura does NOT offer gift cards in order to get positive reviews of their services, but they still suppress a lot of data and goings-on… labeling it proprietary information.

Hope this helps. I think I confused myself several times trying to explain things. The main takeaway... GoComics does not really moderate GoComics anymore (they can override certain actions, I suppose), but they 100% get all the blame when the an end-user/victim is unhappy.

Fun with Photoshop (Clay Jones)

I like Clay (and he knows that), so any misconstrued intent or misinterpretation is just that. This was an unintentional and accidental pairing of two separate images that resulted in a little harmless Photoshop fun on my part. I also decided not to lop off the odd bit of blue fabric on Clay's shoulder since it looks like either an epaulette or a dishwashing scrub pad.

VOTE: 

Epaulette or Dishwashing Scrub Pad?

 

Steller's Sea Eagle vs Bald Eagle

The Steller’s Sea Eagle is significantly larger than the Bald Eagle. 

Size and Weight: The Steller’s Sea Eagle is the heaviest eagle in the world, with females weighing up to 9.5 kg (21 lbs) and a wingspan reaching 2.5 meters (8.2 feet). In contrast, the Bald Eagle is smaller, with females typically weighing around 6.3 kg (14 lbs) and a maximum wingspan of 2.44 meters (8.0 feet). 

Physical Differences: Beyond sheer mass, the Steller’s Sea Eagle has a larger, more robust yellow bill and bare legs, whereas the Bald Eagle has a smaller bill and feathered legs down to its feet. 

The Steller’s Sea Eagle also features darker plumage with white shoulders and tail, while the Bald Eagle is distinguished by its white head and tail.

 

Ready for Winter!

Lightning Hazard Map

I have a friend whose mother was killed by lightning (or indirectly killed.) Her death wasn't instantaneous. She worked in a doctor's office and while walking from the parking lot (a short walk from her car) into the doctor's building, she was struck.  She died three days later.  A year or so before she had, apparently and successfully, fought off cancer (colon cancer, I think). She was in the clear having completed all her chemo and radiation treatments. Cancer-free!!! It's all hard to fathom, but the lightning strike, apparently, awakened her cancer 10 tenfold +. It ravished her body and she died. I'm sort of skeptical, but I'm not going to challenge my friend's belief that this is what happened to his mother.

-----Still, I did some additional research on my own:

"There is no scientific evidence that a lightning strike can awaken dormant cancer. The documented effects of a lightning strike are primarily neurological, cardiac, and thermal — including brain injury, seizures, cardiac arrest, burns, and long-term cognitive issues — but none of the medical literature links the electrical discharge to reactivating dormant tumor cells.

While research (e.g., from the Wistar Institute) has shown that stress hormones can awaken dormant cancer cells, the extreme acute stress of a lightning strike has never been shown to produce this effect in any documented case. The mechanism identified involves sustained elevation of norepinephrine and specific proteins (S100A8/A9) in immune cells over time, not a single electrical event.

There are a few unverified anecdotal reports of lightning "curing" chronic conditions (including one 1932 claim of cancer remission), but these are not supported by medical evidence and are considered coincidences or misdiagnoses."