Short thread. First up: crazy good article that I thiiiink is free. If not DM me. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Again… if we can’t have confessions or Mass “count” on the phone or TV because we’re the big jerks who think sacramental presence is bodily, what in the fuck makes you think we are giving ground to AI. Just be normal and put up a tacky photo of the pope in your house next to the Virgin Mary.

Two of my interests overlap:

D and it isn’t even close but also: this map projection? Really?

This is what David Brooks meant when he said a conservative had texted him that Kirk was their George Floyd. They didn't mean that Kirk was a victim of a profound injustice. In the conservative mind, Floyd was used as a symbolic pretext to reorient society. They want to use Kirk that way.

Pope Leo: “Tears are a language that express the deep feelings of a wounded heart. Tears are a silent cry for compassion and comfort.  Moreover, they cleanse and purify our eyes, our feelings, and our thoughts. We should not be ashamed to cry…” www.vatican.va/content/leo-...

"Under the steel arch of Hell Gate between Astoria, Queens, and Manhattan, musician Grace Leckey searches her heart." sojo.net/articles/cul...

Two of my favorite retro wave tracks are... 10 years old? That doesn't seem right. Anyway, these are getting me through some Sunday evening admin work -- enjoy! www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bhkd... @timecop1983.bsky.social @newretrowave.bsky.social

"So many in our country are trying to forcefully return us to an American past that never was." sojo.net/magazine/nov...

"The peace that you proclaim with your words must dwell even more abundantly in your hearts." #SaintFrancisOfAssisi #LiveTheGospel #ShareGodsLove #PrayForPeace

"…and Magda Goebbels made a great strudel.”

“I say I’m a pacifist because I am a violent son of a bitch.” I think about this Stanley Hauerwas quote a lot. I'm not a pacifist because I hate violence. I'm a pacifist because I can feel what a stranglehold violence has on me, and I need to fight against it with everything in me

I want you all to just watch how quickly mainstream media moves on from this story now.

Something a bit lighter: periodically, @dragonquest.bsky.social / @square-enix-games.com has released little models of towns and landforms from the #dragonquest games, which I think are the coolest things ever. These came out around 2009, but I just recently learned about them. So neat!

A really interesting piece on the interrelation of genre, format, & ratio in magic (& by extension other games’) art. Ryan is doing some great work.

Something interesting and painful about biblical texts is that God’s silence is taken to be meaningful. But it’s not clear what the silence means, so you get different angles and different questions about it. Divine inaction presents itself as a problem, if you will.

Total Amos shill right here, so, yeah, love it.

"Manosphere"... you mean this thing?

The Supreme Court:

Today I saw: THE CHORAL, directed by Nicholas Hytner, starring Ralph Fiennes as the director of the town chorus in a community being robbed of its young men by World War I. Far more subtle than it could have been and genuinely about how great choral singing is for people, which I agree with.

Show me an image on your phone that has your energy but is not a selfie.

The movies don't really get into it, but it's worth remembering that Denethor went crazy because he spent too much time doomscrolling on the Palantír and it cooked his brain

Had a great discussion on what a scholar is and how scholars go about reading texts and asking questions. I defended skim-reading as essential to but not sufficient for the scholarly task. “Vulture mode,” I call skim-reading, because I love metaphors.

Some (paraphrased) Talmudic wisdom from Skeletor.

Well chosen, phenomenally painted.

@hipstersofthecoast.com reached out this summer and told me he was getting the band back together. It was good to play with Magic & meaning again. www.hipstersofthecoast.com/2025/09/phil... #magicthegathering #MTGEOE

;)

This Labor Day (and all other days): Thank the workers who serve you. Appreciate the workers who care for you. Respect the workers who pick up your trash. Salute the workers who get you your mail. Honor the workers who teach your children. Pay all workers a living wage.

Hey, why are we organizing society based on what makes the most money for the people who already own everything? That seems like it'd lead to a bunch of easily foreseen problems.

Office of Readings today goes unbelievably hard

“Nothing is more important than stopping fascism, because fascism will stop us all.” - Fred Hampton

the greatest city in the US, hands down.

“The last person who asserted the authority to use military personnel for routine law enforcement anywhere in the country for any reason was King George.” #PrayForAmerica religionnews.com/2025/08/28/l...

This is some of the hardest shit I've seen in my life

You can’t be pro-Union and also shill for ai in schools. It’s just not coherent. We all know how dangerous ai is to people’s brains, the environment, and to the artists whose work was stolen to train it. Shilling for ai makes you a SCAB

imagine being too lawless and autocratic for the Chicago PD, a group which at one point had its own torture center.

"Some students are still writing their own essays, if you can believe that. Some of them even aspire—and I promise you that I’m not making this up—to write an entire book at some point in their life."

Screaming into the void as a former California resident. Had to give family members the talk about why Newsom is not the hero we want, need, or deserve. 🙃

Ps 9,13 Quóniam requírens sánguinem recordátus est eórum, non est oblítus clamórem páuperum. él venga la sangre, él recuerda y no olvida los gritos de los humildes. for the Avenger of blood has remembered them, has not forgotten the cry of the poor.

We’re back to using paper again on campus, and the debates are heating up in the faculty copy room.

“To a great extent, it appears, our crisis of the humanities is a crisis of academic leadership — a crisis of will, not capacity.” www.chronicle.com/article/they...

SAY IT ONE MORE TIME FOR THE FOLKS IN THE BACK

Aka being a professor at a small religious liberal arts college

“The mother [and her love] is not addressed to something in the child but to the child itself beyond the sum of its qualities…. My ‘I’ is loved, is lovable for my mother, and my reply can only lie in the gift of this ‘I’. Small children throw themselves upon one’s lap like a round ball.”

This, and also: many private, religiously affiliated school teachers don’t have any real credentials for teaching religion, either - there’s a super wide range, from Jesuits and sisters and lay folks with with advanced degrees to some kid’s parent who was pious and willing to work for peanuts…

Our second History Week piece, from @aidanmoher.com, traces a shared cultural lineage between Magic: The Gathering and Final Fantasy, showing that this year's crossover set was both resonance and homecoming.

“Reject not the petition of the afflicted: and turn not away thy face from the needy. Turn not away thy eyes from the poor…” (Sirach 4)