I got a new keyboard this week! Wish me good luck on my quest to master FM synthesis. (After some years fiddling with analog subtractive synthesis, it's time to conquer digital FM.)

I just discovered Luce gifs, and, y'all, we gon' be alright.

I wrote about being inundated with AI writing at every turn, unwittingly turning my brain into the AI police, and how shitty AI writing is randomly showing up in my real life outside of the internet www.404media.co/your-ai-use-...

this graduation speech moment is notable, and her amazed shock at having failed to read the room feels instructive. when you're inside the bubble, you think everybody else is. but everybody isn't.

I know exactly why this happens and it's awesome to see. But don't show it to a flat earther...

dyslexic polytheism:

Still waiting for the first hero to stand up and say something to Trump as he berates and personally attacks another female reporter who asked a legitimate question. It will probably never happen because some things are more important than decency and courage. I guess.

"I asked Wendy if she recognized the irony in using AI to write not just a paper on critical pedagogy but one that argues learning is what 'makes us truly human.' She wasn’t sure what to make of the question. 'I use AI a lot. Like, every day,' she said." My head hurts.

It has to be cheaper for Google to just be a good search engine then to continue to invest billions in ai, but of course that would mean letting us click away from their website. Hey dummies, if no one ever goes to other websites, those websites will stop producing content for your bots to scrape.

There are lots of things I like about the pope being American. This is not one of them. But also, if you're gonna do this, could the cameraman not at least cut to Leo to let us know if he did the "Ba ba ba" part? Source: youtu.be/7XFR8xL7GD4?...

if ai ever works as it’s been sold to us, the most easily replaced employee of every company would be ceo and as far as i can tell theres never been a single article written about that

This is exactly true. These guys don't have an inflated view of machine consciousness. They have a depressingly weak view of human consciousness.

I was just thinking about this today. (That is, thinking of it as a relic of the past and assuming parishes don't do it anymore... oops, gues I'm stuck in my own echo chamber, i.e. parish church)

A silver lining to the Gilded Age (pun intended) was that at least the robber barrons had a penchant for competitve philanthropy. Our billionaires don't even have that.

in case you were wondering what stage of capitalism we're at, google search is now treating the word "crumble" as a misspelling of the cookie brand crumbl

My introduction to "86" was as a kid reading my brother's old comic books, specifically G.I. Joe Special Missions #19. It definitely doesn't mean "kill."

If you're a producer for a cable news show, you should have a tight two-minute montage with a sampling of the many times Donald Trump has encouraged political violence, just waiting for the inevitable Republican guest who tries to pretend Democrats are the real problem here.

When radioactivity was discovered, there was a rush to market for all sorts of radioactive consumer goods. There were water jugs made out of uranium glass, for example. I think about that a lot these days whenever I see AI products being marketed to consumers.

The first Gen Alpha Pope will be Sixtus VII

Honestly, EVERYONE is underestimating new account fatigue. When a local pizza place tried to make me create an account to place a pickup order, I rage-quit and made dinner myself.

This manner of speaking sounds familiar... Oh yeah! this is how 19 year old me justified the 2003 invasion of Iraq even as Pope Benedict was condemning it. I was a young, naive, conservative who had only one or two philosohy courses under my belt. What is Bishop Barron's excuse?

I seriously doubt this will happen, but I've sat here for the last few minutes considering how I would feel if I lived to my nineties, with most of my contemporaries already dead.

I don't recall any previous transformative technologies that had to be sold to the public so hard. No one in 1999 was going, "Guys. Cell phone? It's coming, whether we like it or not. I think it's important, FOR WOMEN ESPECIALLY, to learn about cell phone. So that we're not left behind!!"

Pope Leo in Bamenda: “Woe to those who bend religions and the very name of God to their own military, economic, and political objectives, dragging what is holy into what is most filthy and dark.”

One major problem even among levelheaded people when it comes to public discourse on religion is that we as a society have decided this is an area of life where you can exercise gross epistemic irresponsibility and psychological immaturity in a way that would be completely unacceptable elsewhere

This ain't your dad's USCCB. ...Well, no, that's not recent enough: This ain't your older brother's USCCB. ...Nah, more like: This ain't your preceding Uber passenger's USCCB.

BREAKING: The U.S. bishops’ Committee on Doctrine just issued a formal statement defending Pope Leo XIV's teaching authority on just war doctrine — less than twelve hours after JD Vance told a Turning Point USA crowd the pope should “be careful” talking theology. This is a serious escalation.

My god. Essential, horrifying reporting here.

"Has no one condemned you, woman? ... Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more." - Jesus Christ (notoriously weak on crime)

This is what passes for criticism of Trump in Catholic anti-anti-Trump world:

I just checked this and it's real.

All lapsed Catholics are activating like sleeper agents

ChatGPT prompt: "Write me a statement critical of Trump's Truth Social post about the pope, but make it as amenable and conciliatory toward Trump as possible. I don't want this to burn any bridges."

Trump posting an image of himself as the Anti-Christ is unlikely to sway the minds of people who stood in line to get him to sign their bible.

bodied

I did not expect to see my soapbox issue on the timeline. Pleasant surprise. (Ahem: louder for the people in the back)

I dislike bad liturgy as much as any person with good taste but we Catholics of the left must liberate ourselves from the delusion that "trad aesthetics" are good; overwrought Baroque pastiche and tawdry pseudo-Tridentine liturgy are not in fact beautiful

Speaking of the Avignon papacy, this story about its end is pretty cool:

After Trump's latest genocidal utterances, I'm posting this again from Anaïs Nin’s diary from 1939-1944: “America is in even greater danger because of its cult of toughness, its hatred of sensitivity, and someday it may have to pay a price for this, because atrophy of feeling creates criminals”.

Christian-Zionists try to hasten the second coming by warmongering in the Middle East. Me? I don't trust in earthly powers. I'll just go straight to the man himself: Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus! Bring your apocalyptic judgment. We're in need of salvation for the just and punishment for the wicked.

Well, we embarked upon an unjust war, but at least we lost. There's some justice in that.

Looking, again, for a steelman view of this. Is there ANY plausible argument that we didn’t just kill a bunch of people to no purpose and hand a giant geopolitical victory to an extremist regime after making it more entrenched and more extreme?

Threatening genocide is not a negotiation tactic. It is in fact just what it purports to be: threatening genocide.

Bracing myself for being told I'm supposed to take Trump seriously, not literally.

In which the pope instructs you to write your congressmen. (Pretty sure that's a first.)

I just emailed my congressmen. (Well, not Tuberville... I mean, what's the point?)