Went to jazz in Ault Park and my daughter drew a picture of me listening to music

One of my favorite paintings, especially the dog

When he’s right, he’s right.

We watched the first episode of Spider-Noir last night and it felt like it was set in the same universe as Batman: The Animated Series

Made a calzone for dinner with garlic scapes, chard, pesto, ricotta, and pulled pork. It was tasty.

Attn MAHA:

The Queen let another drop fall from her bottle onto the snow, and instantly there appeared a round box, tied with green silk ribbon, which, when opened, turned out to contain several of the most desirable Needohs.

Boycotting The Odyssey because Christopher Nolan didn’t cast the authentically Greek actor Jason Mantzoukas as Odysseus

ai expansion is conservative in the worst sense because the more you replace the regular internet with ai the fewer new internet posts there will be and the more the internet will be a dead snapshot of everyone's prejudices in 202x

The cover I designed for the hardcover release of Magnifica Humanitas, following the precedent of Roxanne Mei Lum’s encyclical cover designs

"Angel of Death" by Jacek Malczewski, 1902.

I lived in the SF Bay Area for 20+ years and while a Mission-style burrito is pretty good, SoCal burritos are much better and don’t throw off the balance with all that rice.

Drivers who look at their phones at a traffic light aren’t being very Magnifica Humanitas if you ask me

Double-Double from In-N-Out. I miss it, haven’t had one since 2020

Played some old school pinball machines tonight, this was my favorite

Grapes

Ok, this might be the second-dumbest reading of the encyclical that I have seen. I do not believe that he read it slowly or carefully.

In my personal experience the people I know who love AI the most are boomers and they also love telling young people that while some old folks might be afraid of this AI stuff, young people will be able to do great things with it! And then they get puzzled when young people say they don’t like it

Blessings of Beltane be upon you, b3ta. Artist: Captain Howdy https://b3ta.com/board/11427857

Reading a satirical novel (Small World) about academia by David Lodge that features a subplot about an academic who gets obsessed with a computer chatbot because it has been given a female name and will simply keep asking flattering questions of him. It was published in 1984.

The Sacred Heart / The Immaculate Heart, two paintings by Józef Mehoffer, 1911.

You let a guy visit the Ottoman Empire one time and he comes back looking like this

I’m at the White House. I’m at the UFC Stadium. I’m at the combination White House and UFC Stadium

Star Wars is primarily about space hot rods and weird little guys

A new Star Wars series from Armando Iannucci

The social contagion of putting your recycling bins out on the wrong day

Alms for the Poor by Matthäus Schiestl, 1903. A few years ago I found a copy of this lithograph and I have it framed in my living room.

Imagining Bertie Wooster addressing someone as “my B in C”

If I were pope I would issue an encyclical on the doctrine that amateurishly photoshopped images are always funnier than ai images

Pick a Bond villain from the photos you already have on your phone.

Mine in the June 1, 2026 issue of The New Yorker

‘As Plato wrote, the deepest and most important things are learned only after much time and effort, by engaging in discussion with others, “striking upon” ideas and experiences together like flint until the spark of understanding is kindled within us.’ www.vatican.va/content/leo-...

It has been a decade since brands were doing this thing

Turning over the compost, I found out someone threw a whole duck egg in there a few month ago. I found out by sticking a pitchfork through it

Based on how Tolkien is cited in the encyclical vs how Tolkien is used by tech companies, it’s fair to say that Pope Leo understands LOTR better than Silicon Valley does

Also: the forthright way in which Pope Leo says what most politicians are afraid of saying, that private companies cannot continue to dictate the terms on how AI & related technologies are implemented without causing grave harm & need to be reigned within some form of regulatory environment

“In the abstract, technology in and of itself is not a solution to humanity’s problems, just as, in and of itself, it is not inherently evil. In practice, however, technology is never neutral, because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise it, finance it, regulate it and use it.”

Now to see if my prediction will come true (the comments in Magnifica Humanitas about war end up getting more attention than Leo’s commentary on the non-neutral nature of AI)

With vanishingly small exceptions, anyone who sets themselves up as an expert on parenting is full of it and should not be taken seriously

The main difference between Bluesky and X is that on X the discourse is shaped by the worst people on the platform and on Bluesky it’s shaped by the most annoying people. Crucial difference.

How integralists look at you when you ask how non-Christians would be treated by their ideal government

Piroshki and coffee for breakfast.

"The War and Us" by Edward Okuń, painted between 1917 and 1923. The two primary figures are the artist and his wife, with the dragons representing the wars facing Poland at the time.

The thing about living in Ohio is that the protest culture here is very restrained and midwestern. Today I saw someone protesting at an overpass holding a giant sign reading TRUMP is a RUMP! My daughter faux gasped and said “Can they SAY that? Rump means butt!”

Thanks a lot, Joe Biden

Beatles as to what race they would be in Middle Earth: John: arrogant, goes on and on about making a better world while actually causing conflict, obviously an elf George: human, some kind of ranger, sort of mysterious Paul: hobbit, of course Ringo: also hobbit, impaired by longbottom leaf

My youngest kid is interested in learning more about the mind and brain and how it functions, less on the anatomy level and more “how does consciousness work?” He’s ten. Is there anything like Oliver Sacks junior that might fit?

ROBOT POPE ROBOT POPE

Using this to make generic episode titles for main types of DS9 episodes, a thread