I’d rather have a magnolia or most any vegetal kin over a ballroom to honor my memory, but that’s just me…
Trump Rips Out Presidents’ Historic Trees for New Ballroom:
Satellite imagery shows that six trees, including southern magnolias commemorating presidents Warren G. Harding and Franklin D. Roosevelt, were axed or removed from the White House grounds this week as Trump abruptly demolished the East Wing.
This is going to be one of those acquisition moments we look back on in a few years (months?) and think “wow! that really changed the game!” sort of like when Google acquired Writely to make Google Docs…
OpenAI’s Sky for Mac wants to be your new work buddy and maybe your boss | Digital Trends:
So, OpenAI just snapped up a small company called Software Applications, Inc. These are the folks who were quietly building a really cool AI assistant for Mac computers called “Sky.”
I’m talking about plasma and ecology a little more… there’s a lot here that needs to be explored.
This paper develops the concept of Integral Plasma Ecology as a framework that bridges physics, cosmology, and ecological theology through a process-relational lens. Drawing from Alfred North Whitehead’s cosmology, Teilhard de Chardin’s evolutionary mysticism, and Thomas Berry’s integral ecology, I propose that plasma, the most abundant and least understood state of matter in the cosmos, can serve as a metaphysical and theological metaphor for participatory consciousness and relational ecology. My background in physics education informs this exploration, as I integrate scientific understandings of plasma’s dynamics with phenomenological and theological insights from Merleau-Ponty, Edith Stein, and Leonardo Boff. The result is a vision of reality as a living field of plasma-like relationality, charged with energy, consciousness, and divine creativity.
Continue reading Integral Plasma Ecology: Toward a Cosmological Theology of Energy and RelationI don’t like the “consumers” language for ontological and theological reasons, but the intent is still helpful. He’s not wrong here… and it’s something that nonprofits and churches could learn as well if they want to get past the noise and have meaningful engagement with their communities.
Connecting with the Consumer in a Distracted Age | Yale Insights:
Consumers are overwhelmed a bit with the paradox of information available to them today. We’re in this environment where you have every song available on your phone yet there’s never anything to listen to. You have every show available on your TV, and there’s nothing to watch. You have every food available for delivery, and there’s nothing to eat.
So as brands are trying to reach these consumers with messages—when they have access to everything and often don’t pay attention to all the inbound messages—it’s hard to cut through.
Marketing That Happens is essentially the hack. It’s how you get people to engage. It involves taking your brand beyond the walls of paid media to leverage the power of earned media, organic social media, and creativity to create something interesting enough and relevant enough to talk about. Marketing That Happens is about a creative standard of higher engagement. It’s about people self-selecting and “opting in” to your brand’s content—and seeking it out themselves—because it’s interesting to them, given its context, cultural relevance, and the uniqueness of the core creative idea.
Good points here by Simon Willison about the new ChatGPT Atlas browser from OpenAI…
I’d like to see a deep explanation of the steps Atlas takes to avoid prompt injection attacks. Right now it looks like the main defense is expecting the user to carefully watch what agent mode is doing at all times!
We were hit by the Canvas outage at CIIS… it’s amazing that I can have classes for my PhD work with students from around the world, but this is a stark reminder of how delicate those connections are when we rely on centralized technology/power/food production rather than having things local and distributed (as they should be, ultimately… such as solar power networks)…
The AWS Outage Was a Nightmare for College Students | WIRED:
But the disruptions to students are a testament to just how popular Canvas is on college campuses—and how much of modern educational life is increasingly centered on a handful of educational technology platforms.
Speaking of AI… this isn’t only about warehouse jobs but will quickly ripple out to other employers (and employees)…
Amazon Plans to Replace More Than Half a Million Jobs With Robots – The New York Times:
Executives told Amazon’s board last year that they hoped robotic automation would allow the company to continue to avoid adding to its U.S. work force in the coming years, even though they expect to sell twice as many products by 2033. That would translate to more than 600,000 people whom Amazon didn’t need to hire.
Going to be interesting to see if their new browser picks up adoption in the mainstream and what new features it might have compared to others (I’ve tested out Opera and Perplexity’s AI browsers but couldn’t recommend at this point)… agentic browsing is definitely the new paradigm, though.
OpenAI is about to launch its new AI web browser, ChatGPT Atlas | The Verge:
Reuters reported in July that OpenAI was preparing to launch an AI web browser, with the company’s Operator AI agent built into the browser. Such a feature would allow Operator to book restaurant reservations, automatically fill out forms, and complete other browser actions.
For Merianna on our 12th Wedding Anniversary…
12 Cedar Roses
From the cedars in our yard,
I gathered what time had folded as
cones that had become blossoms,
spirals turning the world inward
like memory, like prayer.
12 cedar roses,
for twelve years that have ripened into ring and root.
Not perfect, no bloom is,
but resilient, fragrant with rain,
their brown petals open as if listening.
You, across the table,
the light falling through the window like grace,
half of our meal left untouched because we were talking again
about the kids, about work, about that wild dream
of a small school and church, or maybe just rest.
We have built this life
not from marble or vows,
but from mornings and errands,
from the long silence of growing beside one another,
like those cedars in our front yard,
their roots weaving underground,
trading water, sharing breath and the prayers of photosynthesis.
Each rose is a year we learned
to bend without breaking,
to find the sacred in the daily,
to let the seasons speak through us as
green, gold, bare, then green again.
When the wind moves through their branches tonight,
I will hear the rustle of your laughter,
the sound that still steadies me,
and I’ll remember:
Love is not a bloom we hold,
but the trees that keeps making them.
Sheldrake is one of my favorite thinkers and a huge inspiration for my own work. Great lecture here from my process theology meets medieval Christian theology point of view… well worth your time:
In this talk, Rupert Sheldrake explores panentheism—the idea that the divine is not separate from the world but present throughout it, while also transcending it. With the grip of mechanistic materialism loosening, Rupert invites us to reconsider how we see nature, mind, and spirit. Tracing a broad arc from ancient philosophies and Christian mysticism to AI-generated worldviews, panpsychism, and psychedelics, he reflects on how the sacred presence in nature—-long affirmed by spiritual traditions-—is re-emerging through science, experience, and renewed practices of attention.
This talk was recorded at St James Church, Piccadilly, a longstanding hub for open spiritual inquiry and progressive theology in the heart of London.
Fun time this afternoon at the annual Wofford vs Furman football game! Merianna (a Furman grad) was foolish enough to marry me at Wofford 12 years ago in Mickel Chapel at Wofford. Rev. Skinner would be proud that all of our children pull for the Old Gold and Black!
You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.
-Ray Bradbury
One of those amazing thinkers and scholars who helped shape my own theological journey (first read her work as an Undergrad at Wofford College, and it both answered and provoked questions I had been and continue to wrestle with), along with countless others.
Her work on rhetorical criticism and the book of Jonah is still one of my favorites and a must-read.
Union Theological Seminary: In Memoriam: Dr. Phyllis Trible
Dr. Trible’s scholarship reshaped biblical studies, insisting that the academy and the church confront both the beauty and the brutality of our sacred texts.
Through groundbreaking works—including God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality and Texts of Terror—she taught generations to read with literary rigor, ethical clarity, and courageous empathy. Her method of close rhetorical reading opened space for women and other marginalized people long silenced by interpretive traditions, and her teaching formed scholars, pastors, and activists who carry her insights into pulpits, classrooms, and movements for justice around the world.
Great podcast episode here with the incredible Helen Bond and the always insightful Mark Goodacre, who may or may not have been a listener of Thinking Religion in the Thomas Whitley era…
Since the mid-twentieth century, it has been routine for scholars to see John as independent of the Synoptics – Matthew, Mark and Luke. Yet a recent book by Professor Mark Goodacre suggests that John should be read as the fourth and final ‘Synoptic’ gospel which knew and used all of the Synoptics. Join Helen and Lloyd in the Biblical Time Machine as they explore Goodacre’s case. Learn about John’s dramatic transformation of the Synoptics, the way his Gospel ‘presupposes’ the earlier texts, and the payoff of Goodacre’s argument for John’s authorship and date.
is Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins in the Religious Studies Department at Duke University, North Carolina. He is the author of the classic volumes: The Case Against Q (2002) and Thomas and the Gospels (2012). His most recent book, fresh off the press, is (Eerdmans, 2025),
Fascinating new info…
Hominins suffered lead poisoning starting at least 2 million years ago – Ars Technica:
Lead exposure sounds like a modern problem, at least if you define “modern” the way a paleoanthropologist might: a time that started a few thousand years ago with ancient Roman silver smelting and lead pipes. According to a recent study, however, lead is a much more ancient nemesis, one that predates not just the Romans but the existence of our genus Homo. Paleoanthropologist Renaud Joannes-Boyau of Australia’s Southern Cross University and his colleagues found evidence of exposure to dangerous amounts of lead in the teeth of fossil apes and hominins dating back almost 2 million years. And somewhat controversially, they suggest that the toxic element’s pervasiveness may have helped shape our evolutionary history…
…But perhaps its most interesting feature is that modern humans have a version of the gene that differs by a single amino acid from the version found in all other primates, including our closest relatives, the Denisovans and Neanderthals. This raises the prospect that the difference is significant from an evolutionary perspective. Altering the mouse version so that it is identical to the one found in modern humans does alter the vocal behavior of these mice.
www.reddit.com/r/sports/s/fBTCyMhaNh
I kind of love it.
I know there have been various takes on the Black Rhino bond from 2022 and the long-term outcomes there, but I’m still fascinated (from a philosophical and theological point of view) about these types of mechanisms and initiatives… says a good deal about our Human response to challenges and opportunities that I need to explore more in my research!
Invasive plants bond, biodiversity fund mulled for South Africa – Moneyweb:
As the world looks for ways to curb biodiversity loss, new financial tools are being developed to fund the preservation and restoration of ecosystems. They include swapping sovereign debt for lower-interest bonds, with the savings directed to conservation, and selling instruments that pay investors when targets — such as increases in endangered animal populations — are met.
The Nature Conservancy, a US-based conservation nonprofit, is working with Johannesburg-based Rand Merchant Bank to explore the sale of a biodiversity outcomes bond, Kerry Purnell, a conservation manager for the TNC, said in an interview. Investors will earn returns based on targets for clearing invasive vegetation in the water catchment area around Cape Town being met.
How am I just now reading this?? I should OF read it years ago as a teacher…
Would of, could of, might of, must of | Sentence first:
Unstressed ’ve is phonetically identical (/əv/) to unstressed of: hence the widespread misspellings would of, could of, should of, must of, might of, may of, and ought to of. Negative forms also appear: shouldn’t of, mightn’t of, etc. This explanation – that misanalysis of the notorious schwa lies behind the error – has general support among linguists.
In the context of notebooks (also my favorite being Field Notes that I use almost religiously… and I don’t take that adjective lightly), but also my experience as a 47-year-old rounding the bases…
You should absolutely buy that stupid thing:
Let this be a lesson: you should absolutely buy that stupid thing you want to buy on a whim. It will totally work out.
New alarming study out about the many problems with biofuels and why solar would be a much much better option for local communities and global megacorps to employ…
Biofuels globally emit more CO2 than the fossil fuels they… | T&E:
Global biofuels production emits 16% more CO2 than the fossil fuels it replaces, a new Cerulogy report on behalf of T&E shows. The same land could feed 1.3 billion people, while using just 3% of that land for solar panels would produce the same amount of energy. With demand set to rise by at least 40% by 2030, T&E calls for global leaders meeting in Brazil for COP30 to agree to limit the expansion of a climate solution that is doing more harm than good.
