Category: Status

Where To Go Next?

It’s been an interesting week since I first posted about leaving the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship last Friday. I’ve had mostly pleasant conversations with old friends and partners in various ministries with lots of support and affirmation of my decision. There have been a few more confrontational DM’s and texts from those who felt that I was too harsh towards the Fellowship, but that was to be expected. Challenging the institution is the greatest of sins to some.

One of the things I’m personally considering at this point is the “what’s next?” question when it comes to my own nascent ministry a couple of decades too late.

The Alliance of Baptists is the obvious choice being my own baptist convictions, and that’s something I’ll continue to pursue.

My partner Merianna is now a Minister in the United Church of Christ after leaving the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship herself a while back. I attended a UCC church for a few years while at Yale Divinity School, so it pulls at my heartstrings as well.

Then there are Quaker groups and Unitarian Universalist fellowships that I could also see myself joining due to my own personal worship preferences and philosophies.

On top of those, there’s that still small voice telling me to take ministrieslab or Hunger Initiative seriously and pursue those as ministry opportunities in my anti-authoritarianism way. Both are registered 501c3’s and ready to go. I’m still thinking about that, but thinking that may be the way to go.

Thoughts?

Consider Your Reliance on AI in Your Prepping

I’m not technically a public “prepper” but my friends and family know that I am very interested in things like food preps, gear preps, vehicle preps, water preps, cooking preps… well, I guess I’m a prepper.

This all stems from a massive flooding event here in Columbia, SC in 2015 when my partner Merianna was 9 months pregnant with our son. We got off easy compared to many in our community, but we had to go a couple of weeks without water from the faucet and a few days without power.

It was harrowing.

I’ve always been interested in outdoor gear and prepping as a concept, but I swore one day while driving around looking for overpriced bottles of water that I’d never put my family in that situation again.

Over the last seven years, I’ve gone through quite the transition to being more prepared for short and long term situations. So reading this raised very real alarm bells given how many of us operate…

According to Pew research, 97% of people in the US own smartphones. We might not all use them the same way, and not everyone has high-speed internet access all the time, but we all face the same danger: over-reliance.

The more dependent we become on AI, the harder it’ll be to reconnect with our unaugmented roots should the need ever arise.

Via The Next Web: My Weekend Without Internet

Tuesday, November 17, 2020

Since I was in college (maybe before), I found the concept of pillows strange. So, I started sleeping without one. I’ve always primarily been a “stomach sleeper” (which is a benefit if I ever do contract Covid, I guess). My normal sleeping posture involves my head resting on my left arm face down with my right arm curled up so that my right hand is curled just below my chin.

I’m not sure why I have such an aversion to pillows. I’m not alone, evidently. King Henry VIII banned the use of soft pillows for anyone except pregnant women.

Maybe it’s that independent streak I have and my assurance that I shouldn’t have to rely on things like external pillows for comfort and sleeping posture if I can do it all on my own. Which seems to be a good metaphor for this time in our lives where we are all forced to reconsider what is important and what we rely on to make it through our days and nights. Whether that’s the camaraderie of a busy office space with our co-workers, or meals with friends, or opening night of a major movie in a crowded theater… our brains are undergoing cognitive loads that many of us aren’t realizing but definitely feeling the effects in our day-to-day walk through life.

But in times of change and disruption, the creative spark is made more available as our brains try to make sense of a new reality. Perhaps that what’s the pillow was supposed to prepare us for over the last 10,000 years or so that we’ve actively been using them as human beings. Learning to find comfort in the dark and mysterious time of night with all of its dragons and witches and spells while we give our brains time to defrag from a long day of processing being human.

Most of us aren’t spending our days gathering barley, millet, and emmer or stalking a herd of antelope hoping for a successful hunt to feed our families and appease our gods… but 2020 is weird. Give your brain time to rest and process at night whether you use a pillow or not. Dream up new avenues for your own creativity whether you’re looking for a business angle, a sermon message, or just a new hobby to replace Netflix binging.

What I’m Thinking About Today

At Tuesday’s hearing, Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s chief executive, said the company would no longer make policy exceptions for Mr. Trump after he leaves office in January. During Mr. Trump’s time as a world leader, Twitter allowed him to post content that violated its rules, though it began adding labels to some of the tweets starting in May to indicate that the posts were disputed or glorified violence.

“If an account suddenly is not a world leader anymore, that particular policy goes away,” Mr. Dorsey said.

Well this out to be interesting…

This thing works like an iPad. That’s the best way I can describe it succinctly. One illustration I have been using to describe what this will feel like to a user of current MacBooks is that of chronic pain. If you’ve ever dealt with ongoing pain from a condition or injury, and then had it be alleviated by medication, therapy or surgery, you know how the sudden relief feels. You’ve been carrying the load so long you didn’t know how heavy it was. That’s what moving to this M1 MacBook feels like after using other Macs.

Instagram users’ ability to search is getting an upgrade. Today, the company announced that English-speaking users in six countries, including the UK, US, Ireland, and Canada, will be able to search the platform using keywords. Before today, they could only search for hashtags or accounts. So, for example, if you previously wanted to find “healthy recipes,” you’d only be able to search for posts that tagged #healthyrecipes or accounts with variations on “healthy recipes” in their name or bio. Now, however, Instagram will let people search the keywords themselves, meaning posts that feature healthy recipes should surface, even if the specific tag is missing.

This is super helpful for content creators in specific niches and should help elevate quality posts that otherwise get buried in heavily trafficked hashtags.

Well that’s interesting.

To be updated throughout the day…

Monday November 16, 2020

This is something else…

Monday’s are always slightly (if not totally) chaotic here at home. Like many Americans, we’re homeschooling our children while working from home. After 8 months or so of this, we’ve gotten into a pretty good rhythm and everyone basically understands our schedules and roles. There are days when emergency client projects or calls or ZOOM meetings pop up alongside the occasional last-minute work emergency that throws off the routine, but for the most part we’re making our way through Covid-Times.

What’s fascinating for me are the institutions, businesses, and organizations that don’t express an understanding of the incredible amount of cognitive load that most of their employees or workers or volunteers are under. I’ve seen it with large businesses that I consult with, but especially churches.

There are a number of variables, but I’ve heard horror stories from many employees and pastors of churches (caveat that my partner Merianna is a pastor and the church where she serves has been incredible through all of this) whose congregants or boards or deacons are acting out of an “individualist” rather than “cooperative” model of messaging to staff and the church community.

We all want to go back to “normal” but that’s just not going to happen anytime soon. That’s especially true with Thanksgiving and the Holidays ahead of us. Vaccines are months, if not years, out and in the absence of leadership we’re going to have to rely on ourselves to make it through this Winter, the Spring, and probably the Summer of ’21.

In the meantime, think about your messaging if you’re a church or nonprofit. Think about intentional communication, and realize that there are public health professionals who are experts on this topic. We should listen to them (and not just our Facebook news feed and social media). Use messaging and marketing as an advantage. It’s the only advantage that many churches have these days. But it’s possible to survive and thrive in a pandemic as many healthy congregations are learning. Don’t wait for “normal” to return before your church faces reality. And be kind to your pastors and staffs.

What I’m Thinking About Today

You Still Need to Have the Conversation – Culture Study

“Maybe you can promise a big gathering next year, or hours this year on the day-of playing Among Us or just watching a movie together. You can use the health of your own children or your cousin or your grandparents as a cudgel. Just remember that the most affective appeal to an individualist is always going to be from the people they care about in their immediate sphere. A state-wide lockdown might not change their behavior. An emailed article certainly won’t. But you might.”

Very important post that you should read before Thanksgiving. Don’t enable or assume. Confront people with facts and care.

Squarespace’s New Feature Could Help Businesses Survive the Pandemic – Fast Company

The company is introducing what it calls Member Areas—special sections of customer websites that are restricted to people who’ve signed up for a membership, which can mean paying a regular subscription charge, coming up with a onetime fee, or simply creating a login. The goal is to give Squarespace customers a new way to offer content to their own customers and fans, whether that’s fitness instructors providing paid online classes during the coronavirus pandemic, writers offering regular newsletters to people who provide their email addresses, or chefs sharing virtual cookbooks with onetime purchasers.

Interesting move from Squarespace… we use the platform for a few client sites still (mostly small business and churches). I’m technically a certified Squarespace Developer, but I’m not a huge fan of designing or developing there. Many of our clients who insist on starting with Squarespace “because it’s cheaper” eventually make the jump to WordPress and our hosting packages (don’t get me started on Wix). All that said, I welcome these sorts of new opportunities for businesses and individuals to utilize their own sites for these sorts of features rather than having to use a 3rd party service like Patreon etc.

You can now embed Apple Podcasts on the web – TechCrunch

Apple is making it easier to discover and listen to podcasts via the web. The company announced today an Apple Podcasts embed web player is now available, allowing anyone — including creators, listeners or marketers — to generate embed codes for the over 1.5 million shows available across the Apple Podcasts service.

Good on Apple. You can now embed Thinking.FM on your own site!

New Zoom feature can alert room owners of possible Zoombombing disruptions – ZDNet

The new “At-Risk Meeting Notifier” Zoom feature scans the internet and alerts conference organizers when a link to their Zoom meeting has been posted online.

That’s helpful… should have been developed and deployed a few months back, Zoom.

Open source: Better solutions and a more inclusive society – Yoast Blog

Volvo designed the first three point belt design in the sixties. It is patented, but open for everyone to use. Also, Volvo allows open source access to its crash-research data.

Big believer in open source technology (and knowledge rights) here. Super interesting post.

Vikings unwittingly made their swords stronger by trying to imbue them with spirits – Big Think

To strengthen their swords, smiths used the bones of their dead ancestors and animals, hoping to transfer the spirit into their blades.

There’s a little bit of magic in all science.

To be updated throughout the day…