Reading Time: 40 minutes Can I offer you a piece of advice? Next time it’s incredibly hot, if someone suggests to you that you spend nine hours at a dayrave, taking place in what are effectively two massive car parks surrounded by concrete walls, that instead of enthusiastically saying “yes please!” and overexcitedly getting On It you instead say “no, thankyou, I am Too Old For That Sort Of Thing” and stay somewhere airconditioned instead? I, sadly, did not make that sensible decision last…
Sponsored: This article is made possible by Catholic Card Game, supporting quality and engaging Catholic content. “Joy is the net of love by which we catch souls.”—Saint Teresa of Calcutta Let’s be honest: no one wants to join a movement that looks miserable. The early Christians didn’t spread the Gospel by groaning through Galilee. They … Continue reading Holy Laughter: Why Joy is Essential in Evangelization The post Holy Laughter: Why Joy is Essential in Evangelization first appeared on The…
lingthusiasm:118: Using tech to chat with bonobos, dogs, and whalesCan we teach dogs to express their needs better by pressing buttons? What about the studies trying to teach bonobos and other primates to communicate through buttons or signs? What have we learned about whale communication from the first-ever recording of a sperm whale birth?In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about how people use technology to try and enhance our communications with…
Another timely update on this side of the house: as of this spring, I’m now a UX director for design engineering (aka front-end web development - good old HTML, CSS, and JavaScript) at a very large company headquartered in Rhode Island. It’s my first corporate gig! I’m back in an office most days of the week. And, I’m leading a team again after a relatively restful few years as an individual contributor. I’ve enjoyed re-activating my people-manager neurons and will likely have something more to…
A key aspect of my work involves addressing participation. Economic, cultural, community, civic and sports participation. In that context, P is for participation. It’s in the policy documents, the strategy papers, the funding applications, the speeches at conferences and events. Everyone is seemingly for participation. We want everyone to participate, hooray! 🎉 But if you’ve ever tried to navigate the systems designed to enable it, you might wonder if P is actually for Preclusion; being shut…
ConclusionQuoteThe present age will hereafter merit to be called the Age of Reason, and the present generation will appear to the future as the Adam of a new world. Notes🔥 In the late 18th century, the word "revolution" took on a different meaning, more "linked to a belief in the advancement of mankind from barberism to civilization, based on the spread of enlightenment and on the inalienable rights of man." Thomas Paine was a leading figure in this shift of meaning and perspective. 🔥 He…
A big chunk of, "Marvel," as we know it, is currently in California. The movie stuff (Marvel Studios), the owner of the company (Disney), and so forth. Marvel Comics has been in New York City (in some form before it was even Marvel as well) for over 100 years. Just as DC found itself consolidated in California, Marvel plans to relocate everyone in NYC to Burbank over the next year (whoever is willing and won't otherwise quit), having it all switched over by July 2027. It makes sense from…
As I observed last year, the statement that “The cemeteries are full of indispensable people.” is just as true of nations, and in particular the US. That was a little controversial at the time, but now it’s become sufficiently conventional wisdom to be restated in the New York Times. I’ve been working on an update. and that seems like a signal to get it out As far as military dependence is concerned, the “indispendable nation” has already been dispensed with. The US no longer has either the…
Added Tumblr themes to the Resources page!
Our Q&A discussions are a lot of fun, and we’re grateful to everyone who submits their questions. If you missed any of our live shows, the full streams are available here on Substack. But this week is a little different!Instead of this week’s Q&A being tonight at 7:00 p.m. Eastern, we will be recording a few videos tomorrow — and we want to know what topics Glenn should cover in depth! We recommend dropping your questions in the comments as soon as you have them. (Questions submitted later are…
A lot of people say that the Vikings had very good hygiene and that this was rare and unusual in medieval Europe.A lot of other people say that the Vikings were vile and disgusting and that this was common and normal in medieval Europe.Both these contradicting perspectives are based on two single sources, one Christian and one Muslim.In this article I will look at the medieval Christian source and explain what is reliable and what is unreliable about it and what it actually proves about hygiene…
The title of this series, "Seeking God in Science", was meant to be a metaphor. This should not come as a surprise. We are (almost certainly) not going to find a literal supernatural being using the scientific method. But — and I cannot emphasize this enough — this is not because the scientific method is prejudiced against such an outcome. This is a charge often leveled
The decline of Europe is not inevitable, despite how much Americans love to joke/proclaim that the continent is doomed to become an open-air museum. Sure, it's possible that things have to get worse before they get better, but believing that "it's over" is just loser talk. It's never over, but the old world also won't recover by itself.So here's my pithy prescription for how Europe can find its way back to The Good Times.#1 End mass migrationNo single issue has cost Europe more than mass…
Alas, to be an indie RPG designer is to be both the author, the project manager, the social media, and the marketer (among other things). You may have heard me mention this week (on this blog and through social media) that voting for the 2026 ENNIES is currently going on and the Designing Dungeons Course is up for Best Online Content. I make no apologies for shilling!But, if I must advertise, I should at least be funny.That's why I put together the...CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVERTISEMENT (CYOA)Click…
I almost fell for the recruitment agency scam… I was unsure but just had a some useful interaction with a recruitment agency. Back on 7th July I revived an email on my gmail address, not the one I mainly use for linkedin and lots of sites. Regardless I thought maybe they got it another way. Here’s the email… Hello, I hope you’re doing well. I’m currently supporting several leadership and specialist searches, and your background stood out as potentially well aligned with a few of them. Before…
Borys Kit / The Hollywood Reporter: After calling the Big Apple home for almost 90 years, Marvel Comics is moving out of New York City. And heading to Hollywood. The relocation was revealed to staff at a town hall Thursday at Marvel’s New York office in Midtown, where employees were informed that its publishing division will be pulling up stakes and transferring operations to Burbank, California, the current headquarters of Marvel Studios and corporate parent, The Walt Disney Company. The…
This is an excerpt from my upcoming book: humanuscript. White violence is predictable. First off, to themselves. White supremacists truly are victims of their own inability to heal from deep generational trauma. This is not an excuse; it's the reason. They're so divorced from reality and their own history that they are making it the world's problem. They cannot sit with their own pain, cannot face what their ancestors did and what they continue to do, so they project it outward. They…
Notes This is mostly intended as a resource that I can point people towards as an introduction to atproto, not for folks who’ve already consumed the koolaid I’ve been excited about the potential of atproto for awhile, initially by the data portability aspect, but more recently I’m digging the idea that it’s essentially a giant public datastore that you can work with for projects What is the Atmosphere? A community. What is it not? Bluesky. That said, Bluesky is a decent starting point for most…
The interview, presented in the glorious text medium, is here. shmuplations’ Bluesky linked it from here. Kenji Eno (image from Wikipedia) Kenji Eno (Wikipedia), the creator of horror games D and Enemy Zero, and other iconoclastic games like You, Me and the Cubes (Wikipedia). He passed away from a heart attack in 2013. Shigeru Miyamoto (image from Wikipedia) Shigeru Miyamoto (for form’s sake, Wikipedia) is of course the legendary game designer and producer at Nintendo, creator of Donkey Kong…
“The fact that you, an expert human, generated the text is evidence that the view is worth thinking about—more so than if the text were generated by an LLM.” That’s Eric Schwitzgebel (UCR), writing at The Splintered Mind about why he doesn’t want to receive AI-written emails about philosophy, and why philosophy journals should reject AI-written submissions. Here’s more context: I’m talking about evidence about evidence: meta-epistemology. Your email or your article presents evidence for a…
My chipotle order has changed. I’ve gone all in on the “get as much as possible for leftovers” philosophy, so I double up on most ingredients now. And I dropped the sour cream and hot salsa.
Like many Canadians, I’ve been wondering why the price of beef is so expensive. This article from the CBC explains why. To summarize the article: supply is low, demand remains strong, production costs are soaring, and the processing network is highly concentrated with inter‑provincial regulatory. Canadian farmers need to growth their herd sizes, but it … Continue reading On the high cost of Canadian beef in the summer of 2026
In writing and publishing, I’ve been everywhere. I’ve been edited by men and women, by the non-binary and the trans; by the old, the young, the middle-aged; by liberal Catholics and trad Catholics, by mainline Protestants, by evangelicals, by hardline Anglican traditionalists and the Orthodox, by Muslims and Jews, by agnostics and atheists. I may even have been edited by a Hindu or two. Possibly a Buddhist. I’ve written for Christianity Today and the New Yorker. I’ve written for Intervarsity…
Meanwhile, in the free-market USA of 1887
Academic publishing has long been dominated by commercial players. That fact is well-known, as are many of the problems. But there is a growing movement towards new models, under the labels of “open access” and “open science.” Until two weeks ago, I’ve held a role as co-editor of an interdisciplinary journal, which allowed me to see some of the problems from close. But I’ve also learned more and more about solutions.* What follows are some personal reflections on these issues – if you’re…
I was pretty struck by an article in the Sunday Times this week. Written by Charlotte Ivers, it discusses the toxic effects on Gen Z caused by their use of smartphones and by extension, social media. Seemingly Gen Z suffers from Obsessive Compulsory Disorder (OCD) in astonishing numbers. This particularly affects young women for whom the percentage is 6.1% against a national figure of 2.2%. As a whole, mental health issues are suffered by almost a third of the Gen Z cohort. That is, those born…
Look out of your nearest window, and there’s a good chance you’ll see several expensive tonnes of metal, glass, and plastic sitting idle. In fact, I am doing that right now. It wasn’t always this way for me. In the early phases of my investing journey, I managed to avoid the expense and responsibility of owning my own car. But I could only hold out so long. And between work trips and the need to transport kids quickly and safely, the debate now isn’t whether we need a car – it’s whether we need…
You take a step toward learning from someone when you admire them. But you can also take a step away from learning if you aren’t careful.When you finish a book, podcast, or thread from someone impressive, you feel a sense of fullness. You assume if you just do what they did, you’ll get to where they got. That is almost never true.In this video, I break down why copying successful people usually fails, how teachers sell you dependency disguised as pedagogy, and how you can extract the real…
From: https://music.apple.com/gb/album/easy-street/6782098982?i=6782098983Josh Homme is taller than you might think. Sure, he has a reputation for being a big guy, but somehow in person he manages to be greater than his actual height. It’s as though the rest of the world has been shrunk around him. I met him a handful of times several lifetimes ago when Queens of the Stone Age put out their first record on Matador, and his presence in a room was never anything less than significant. Even in the…
