I recently re-read the original "Worse is Better" from 1989 (see dreamsongs.com/WorseIsBette...). It reminded me a lot of current discussions around AI in programming. In particular, it seems to me that Anthropic and OpenAI have built a whole business plan on building things "New Jersey style" —

I've seen lots of conversation recently about AI and preaching, both online and in my own social circles, in part because of this week's encyclical, in part because my two worlds are church and programming, and in part because things are moving so fast that people are talking about AI everywhere.

This is true but the most fun part is that there's a typo* in the Greek

Toby Buckle@polphilpod.bsky.social · 5mo ago

ONETHINGTOREMEMBERABOUTTHEBIBLEISLIKEMANYANCIENTTEXTSITWASWRITTENINSCRIPTIOCONNTINUAMEANINGNOWORDBREAKSORPUNCTUATIONYOUWEREEXPECTEDTOWORKALLTHATOUTFROMCONTEXTHEREISLUKE112INCODEXSINAITICUS

Reading the news in 2026 is like:

I check Fox semi-regularly to see what people I disagree with are being told. Just now: "The New York Post reported that an accidental discharge of Pretti's...pistol, which was being held by an agent after it was taken away from him, may have made authorities believe their lives were in danger."

Their defense, by the way, is "We didn't know we were essentially paraphrasing Hitler, we were just expressing a common nationalist sentiment." I'm not sure that "We weren't being edgelords, we just substantively agree with some of the principles of National Socialism" is that effective an argument

Editing the Blue-Gray Lady@nytdiff.bsky.social · 10mo ago

ICE kidnapped a 7th-grader with a pending asylum claim and spirited him out of state without notifying his parents, seemingly with the cooperation of the local police in Everett, MA. www.bostonglobe.com/2025/10/12/m...

Choose your fighter.

I feel like this photo of masked, armed men pepper spraying a pastor protecting his community is going to be a defining picture of this moment in America for a long, long time.

The funniest and most frustrating part of old Twitter/new Bluesky is that it consists largely of smart and well-educated people having arguments about things outside their areas of expertise, in ways that rehash the contents of intro classes in the subject, with no self-awareness about it.

unbothered. moisturized. happy. in my lane. making friends for myself by means of the mammon of unrighteousness. flourishing.

Many people don’t know that Kristallnacht was unleashed in response to the assassination of a German diplomat in Parish by a German-born Polish Jew living in Paris. His parents were Polish migrants whose legal status had just been revoked by both Germany and Poland, leaving them trapped in a camp.

I'm willing to believe that the best chatbot spiritual counsel could be *better* than the worst human forms. There are plenty of clergy who will say things that are net harmful. On the other hand, it comes nowhere near the *best* human spiritual counsel, which is also grounded in empathy.

The New York Times@nytimes.com · 12mo ago

The “faith tech” industry is booming, as millions of people are turning to chatbots to confess their darkest secrets and seek spiritual guidance.

ok everybody get ready 30tgrs.ffm.to/armiesofthel...

The Mountain Goats - Armies of the Lord

Choose your preferred music service

30tgrs.ffm.to

Honestly, this is one my favorite church buildings in the entire world, in every season. What an odd thing to be the Rector. I randomly took the photo on the left yesterday to replace the one on the right on our website, after our administrator pointed out it was a bit snowy for September.

I've lived in Boston my whole life, and people really are like this... and it's what makes Massachusetts great. +++ "The only thing that really needs to be done at South Station is clean the bathrooms, they really need some attention," said Linda Radzvilla of Mashpee.

WBUR@wbur.org · last yr.

A Trump administration official said the federal government may try to take over Boston's South Station "for more security and cleanliness." Commuters there said they aren't on board with that idea.

From: Donald John Trump Subject: I want to try to get to Heaven. ... That's why I've launched a 24 HOUR TRUMP FUNDRAISING BLITZ, and I'm asking everyone to chip in $15 to make it one for the record books! ... Sincerely, Donald John Trump

One of the potential problems with the rapid adoption of LLMs in fields like education is that the entire ecosystem depends on a handful of products by very large companies that are currently losing huge amounts of money on them, creating a classic “too big to fail” situation. Perversely (1/2)

There hath been a disturbance in a church in Friday Street; a great many young people knotting together and crying out “Porridge” often and seditiously in the church, and took the Common Prayer Book away; and did tear it; but it is a thing which appears to me very ominous.

Today was example number 137 of the principle that the longer you give something to cook in your brain, the less time it takes to type at the keyboard. It turns out spending all week thinking about something without having a chance to write it does in fact make the writing much faster!

There is a crisis of masculinity in America, and it’s that a large number of men are terrified, all the time, of ordinary life. Like these guys are… so scared of being asked for money in a train station that they have called out the National Guard to protect them? Man up, bro.

Tried the new “EpiscoBOT.” I don’t think I need to throw out my diploma yet, chat. (Or my calendar, I guess.)

Posting on Bluesky, if you are active in circles related to your vocation or profession, is not like texting your friends. It is like writing a letter to the editor of your local paper. Discerning whether something is for a public post or the group chat or your journal is a really important skill!

My favorite gerrymandering fact: Massachusetts has a 60-40 vote split and a 100% Democratic Congressional delegation, not because it’s gerrymandered but because it’s so uniformly divided at around 60-40 throughout the state that you can’t make a single contiguous district that a Republican could win

Patient, sobbing: But Doctor, I AM Pagliacci! ChatGPT: Apologies. I didn't realise when recommending Pagliacci's epic show to cure your depression that you were the genius himself. I'm impressed! With regards to your initial question, I can recommend seeing the Great Clown Pagliacci.

This is a great example of the way in which non-technical people have been duped into pulling LLMs into areas where traditional computing is really good and LLMs are really bad… like generating invoices and payment records.

The PS1 startup sound as a lesbian@janus.bsky.social · last yr.

my landlord has been claiming i owe over $4,000 in missed rent payments for months, and when i asked for receipts they sent me the rental history of a person from a different building w/ all their personal info. when i pointed this out they apologized & said their chatbot generated this. meanwhile:

For my Rust/web programming followers: here’s a short video introducing the code-splitting features released in Leptos this week youtu.be/w5fhcoxQnII?...

Lazy Leptos: WASM code splitting for fun and profit

YouTube video by Greg Johnston

youtu.be

I don’t think it’s likely to help us treat humans better if we become more used to talking to computers

Honestly if someone had asked me whether “Yeti Blood Oath Seminary Follies” was a Mountain Goats track title before I’d seen the story, I’d have been like 50-50. Maybe a B-side I didn’t know? Gives “Maize Stalk Drinking Blood” title vibes, you know?

the Mountain Goats@themountaingoats.bsky.social · last yr.

the yeti blood oath seminary follies, for those of you who, like me, had not heard www.pillarcatholic.com/p/yeti-blood...

One of the cool things about early medieval history is that there are both many more weird Latin names and many more weird Germanic names than we use today, along w our names. So eg I just read a page that included Bishop Sagittarius (v Latin), Queen Radegund (v Germanic), and also a Gregory.