Dr. Thomas Whitley and the Rev. Sam Harrelson discuss nativity scenes, bad Christmas songs, Epiphany, the War on Christmas, and bad Apple (batteries).
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!
Links:
Blog
Googling Inside Your Church
Fascinating piece on Google Maps history and possible directions…
So Google likely knows what’s inside all of the buildings it has extracted. And as Google gets closer and closer to capturing every building in the world, it’s likely that Google will start highlighting / lighting up buildings related to queries and search results.
This will be really cool when Google’s/Waymo’s self-driving cars have AR displays. One can imagine pointing out the window at a building and being able to see what’s inside.
I’m excited about Magic Leap’s Lightwear
We’ve been working on this tech since the 1830’s and we’re almost to the point of mass adoption and use cases…
Magic Leap today revealed a mixed reality headset that it believes reinvents the way people will interact with computers and reality. Unlike the opaque diver’s masks of virtual reality, which replace the real world with a virtual one, Magic Leap’s device, called Lightwear, resembles goggles, which you can see through as if wearing a special pair of glasses. The goggles are tethered to a powerful pocket-sized computer, called the Lightpack, and can inject life-like moving and reactive people, robots, spaceships, anything, into a person’s view of the real world.
via Lightwear: Introducing Magic Leap’s Mixed Reality Goggles – Rolling Stone
Building a website is cheap, but not protecting it is costly.
We use Wordfence as a default on all new WordPress client sites that we create for good reason. Here’s a scary reminder that while building a website has become quick, easy, and relatively cheap your company / nonprofit / church / community group should not take WordPress security for granted with cheap hosting and no one overseeing these sorts of things:
This is the highest volume brute force attack we have seen to date. It may also be using the fresh credentials that were provided in the database released on December 5th, so it may achieve a higher than normal success rate. Please spread the word among the WordPress community to create awareness of this new threat.
via Breaking: Aggressive WordPress Brute Force Attack Campaign Started Today, 3am UTC
Nonprofits, the smartphone, Facebook, and Google
Interesting thoughts here from the NY Times CEO on how they are shifting focus in relationship to Facebook and Google due to the smartphone revolution … much of this applies to how nonprofits and churches can do better marketing as well:
It’s about how you think about the product and what you’re trying to do and what is the value you’re giving to users. The areas of weakness in the publishing industry have been not having an audience strategy or sufficient brain space to think about how you serve your audience. It’s very easy to get tracked into assumptions about who your audience is. In legacy media, journalistic parameters were set by the geographical limitations. [The smartphone] changes everything. You need to reinvent journalism from the ground up with this device in mind, and then try and figure out what you’re going to do on a laptop and the physical newspaper.
It’s a 3 Screen Kind of Monday
Working from home with our son this week. He likes to contribute to my setup with various design inspirations.
Left to Right: Google Pixelbook, iPad Pro, Samsung Chromebook Pro
Why two Chromebooks? I’m using Chrome Remote Desktop on the Pixelbook to run Adobe Illustrator via the Windows desktop in my office and keeping notes on the Samsung. The iPad is there for renderings in Pixelmator and for Trello.
I’ve got the Pixelbook Pen and Apple Pencil for the iPad but still really only use those when I’m in tablet mode and taking notes on a meeting or call in Evernote.
Facebook Cracks Down on Engagement Baiting
What you see on Facebook greatly depends on what Facebook thinks you want to see. It’s a complicated algorithm of past behaviors, your own demographic info as well as what people who you interact with often are liking or sharing. “Likes” and “Shares” on a post can greatly amplify the number of people who see it.
However, you shouldn’t be blatant and ask for likes or shares in a way that can be perceived as annoying or “spammy.” Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Google have all been throttling this sort of “engagement behavior” in small ways over the last year or so on their respective platforms. We’ve been encouraging clients to not use those terms regardless of how much goodwill might be behind a post.
But it’s great to see Facebook publicly discouraging people from asking for likes and shares:
Facebook is cracking down on a new type of clickbait: Posts that ask people to Like or share or comment to goose engagement numbers, what Facebook is calling “engagement bait.”
You’ve probably seen posts like this in your feed before. Like if you think cats are best. Share if you think dogs are best. It’s a tactic that publishers will use to game Facebook’s algorithm, which rewards posts that get better engagement and shows them to more people.
via Facebook is clamping down on posts that ask people for Likes or shares – Recode
Episode 133: Our Holiday Extravaganza
Dr. Thomas Whitley and The Rev. Sam Harrelson are joined by The Rev. Lauren E. Larkin, Prof. W. Travis McMaken ("McBacon"), and The Rev. Merianna Neely Harrelson in an extravaganza of epic proportions. They discuss Clash of the Titans, why you should write a book, gendered religious language, Ancient Aliens, Alex Jones, flogging, and hate watching the world burn.
Special Guests: Lauren R.E. Larkin, Merianna Neely Harrelson, and W. Travis McMaken.
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Episode 132: Is It Worth Selling Your Soul?
Dr. Thomas Whitley and The Rev. Sam Harrelson discuss the #metoo Revolution, amplifying voices, and whether anything is worth trading your integrity.
Links:
Episode 131: Pushing Against the Public Transcript
Dr. Thomas Whitley and the Rev. Sam Harrelson discuss Black Friday, gaming, moral questions, Evangelical strawmen, and complicity.
Links:
- Why It’s Justified To Vote For A Morally Questionable Politician
- Southern Baptists have lost a million members in 10 years – Baptist News Global
- The End of the Social Era Can’t Come Soon Enough | Vanity Fair
- MCALLISTER: A Response To Ben Shapiro: Christians Shouldn’t Feel Guilty About Voting For Roy Moore | Daily Wire
Tech and Public Policy
Interesting article from NY’s Attorney General directed at the FCC:
In today’s digital age, the rules that govern the operation and delivery of internet service to hundreds of millions of Americans are critical to the economic and social well-being of the nation. Yet the process the FCC has employed to consider potentially sweeping alterations to current net neutrality rules has been corrupted by the fraudulent use of Americans’ identities — and the FCC has been unwilling to assist my office in our efforts to investigate this unlawful activity.
…
If law enforcement can’t investigate and (where appropriate) prosecute when it happens on this scale, the door is open for it to happen again and again.
All my big mistakes…
“What’s a computer?”
There’s this meme that keeps coming back on Twitter. A young person discovers a floppy disk and calls it the save icon. Apple is using the same idea with this ad. When the mum asks her daughter what she is doing on her computer, she answers “what’s a computer?”
via Apple’s new ad shows how iPads are going to replace laptops | TechCrunch
There’s no doubt that “computing” will continue to evolve from the way we interpret that action today (based on conventions that come from machines primarily from the 80’s but also the mainframes and typewriters that preceded them).
I’ve been using a Google Pixelbook for 99% of my “computing” over the last two weeks. I love the integration that this device has with the Android app store and being able to install apps like Microsoft Word or Excel or Powerpoint and use them in full screen as if I was on a Windows laptop. I also love being able to flip this device around into “tablet mode” and play racing games or browse Netflix using what were previously mobile apps. Combined with the Pixel Pen, this device has changed the way I think about my own workflow in a rapid fashion.
The iPad Pro can do that for many people (especially students but also “adults”) as well.
I’m a big fan of the show Westworld. It has incredible visual effects and a captivating story. But the technology used by characters on the show is what really draws me in (I know I know). The handheld “computing” devices they use with foldable screens, touch sensing, AI, and integration of mobile and laptop features is so attractive to me. I hope Apple / Google / Amazon / Microsoft or whatever company that is currently being bootstrapped in a young person’s garage apartment gets us there in the next decade.
We’re almost there with transitional devices like the iPad Pro or the Pixelbook.
Episode 130: Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!
Dr. Thomas Whitley and the Rev. Sam Harrelson are joined by Prof. Chris Frilingos to discuss his book "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph: Family Trouble in the Infancy Gospels" and why the Infancy Gospel of Thomas and Proto-Gospel of James are so important for contemporary audiences.
Special Guest: Christopher A. Frilingos.
Links:
- Jesus, Mary, and Joseph | Christopher A. Frilingos
- Amazon: Jesus, Mary, and Joseph: Family Trouble in the Infancy Gospels — When Jesus was five he killed a boy, or so reports the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. A little boy had run into Jesus by accident, bumping him on the shoulder, and Jesus took offense: “Jesus was angry and said to him, ‘You shall go no further on your way,’ and instantly the boy fell down and died.” A second story recounts how Jesus transformed mud into living birds, while yet another has Joseph telling Mary to keep Jesus in the house so that no one else gets hurt. What was life really like in the household of Joseph, Mary, and little Jesus? The canon of the New Testament provides few details, but ancient Christians, wanting to know more, would turn to the texts we know as the “Infancy Gospels.”
- Infancy Gospel of James, or Protevangelium (M.R. James translation)
- The Infancy Gospel of Thomas
- Did early Christians believe that Mary was a teenager? It’s complicated
- Amazon.com: Jesus, Sin, and Perfection in Early Christianity (9781107105416): Jeffrey S. Siker: Books
- Amazon.com: Saving Sex: Sexuality and Salvation in American Evangelicalism (9780199942251): Amy DeRogatis: Books
Episode 129: Writing Their Last Chapters
Dr. Thomas Whitley and Rev. Sam Harrelson watch election returns together and discuss the impact of our choices and the role of our national patience.
Is the iPhone X as a UX disaster?
You’re looking at a UX disaster, the result of eliminating what is probably the simplest, most intuitive form of navigation ever implemented in consumer electronics: the iPhone’s home button. The iPhone X replaces it with the mess above. This is bad news, because this interaction is a fundamental part of the user experience.
“a new combination of media company and public utility”
Great point… and it’s unimaginable to me that anyone in government or a high profile position would take their own security and (operational and informational) so lightly…
As we saw this week, when Twitter, Facebook, and Google testified on Capitol Hill about Russias election meddling, “social media companies have failed to come to grips with who they are, and what role they play in society. They imagine themselves as tech companies that just make products, but they’re actually a new combination of media company and public utility,” Singer added.
These companies use of contractors, often part-time workers in internet call centers, to handle abuse and moderation is something else to consider. Twitter, for example, has never provided a breakdown of how much of its workforce is contracted.
via A Former Twitter Employee Told Us How a Contractor Could Take Down Trumps Account – Motherboard
Episode 128: “I have no idea what you believe.”
Sam is joined by The Rev. Merianna Neely Harrelson to discuss beards, doubt, faith, securing your spot in The Good Place or The Bad Place, ethics and eschatology, rededicating your life, and salvation bracelets.
Special Guest: Merianna Neely Harrelson.
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Episode 127: Under the Screen
Dr. Thomas Whitley and Rev. Sam Harrelson discuss the iPhone X, Airpods and Mods, prepping for the coming apocalypses, Heaven's Gate, and the theologies of nativism.
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Episode 126: The Problems with The Dark Age
Dr. Thomas Whitley and Rev. Sam Harrelson discuss anniversaries and birthdays in the Facebook age, whether the Vikings referenced Allah in their gear, and why "The Dark Ages" is such a troublesome concept (and why we're currently in the midst of The Digital Dark Age).
Links:
- Sam Harrelson on Instagram: “It’s here (no, I’m not going to do a dorky unboxing video…maybe)!” • Instagram
- Debunking Viral Story, Art Historian Says ‘Allah’ Does Not Appear on Ancient Viking Garment | artnet News
- Dark Ages (historiography) – Wikipedia
- 6 Reasons the Dark Ages Weren’t So Dark – History Lists