How much better things will be with AI agents who are consistent! Xfinity Hallucinating Customer Service Hell
How much better things will be with AI agents who are consistent! Xfinity Hallucinating Customer Service Hell
One of David Brooks’ many merits was distinguishing résumé virtues (for which aspiring meritocrats strive) from eulogy virtues. (Reading a promising interview with him.)
Maybe it’s because of my age and my frequent solo lunches that I think this Billy Collins, Old Man Eating Alone in a Chinese Restaurant, is awfully good.
Christianity is a highly adaptable collection of faiths … It can be liberal or conservative or apolitical. It can be hellfire and brimstone or love and forgiveness. It can be whatever it needs to be to survive, [and] it will.
T.J. Kirk a YouTuber for twenty years as “The Amazing Atheist”, via Nick Pompella.
Ouch!
Thoughts?
Was Abraham Lincoln a Christian?.
I didn’t read it because the only acceptable answer is “none of our business” (even on Presidents Day), isn’t it?
I am influenced in my rejection by my late Aspie brother’s obsession with the question.
Not a fan of the ELCA, but we owe them a debt of gratitude for this.
Butterflies on my stomach already: Purdue, moving from a 12 ranking to #7, meets #1 Michigan tonight. My consolations are (1) it’s only a game (it’s only a game, it’s only a game), and (2) Purdue plays that only-a-game at home.
Robert Duvall’s presence was my assurance that a movie was great. He never acted in drek. I will miss him.
I often marvel at the stupidity of criminals, leaving breadcrumbs right to their doors.
The second Trump administration is kinda like that. With no grownups in the room, tone-deaf monsters rule.
Could the basest populism be self-limiting?
I just finished a subchapter of The Life You Save May Be Your Own about Walker Percy’s struggles over race in the 1950s. Raised Southern Gentry (i.e., stoic with noblesse oblige), his new Catholicism left him conflicted. The stoicism had to go; his world was rupturing.
A compelling account.
After a long weight-loss plateau, I weighed less this morning than I have weighed in (quick check) fourteen years. Another 25 pounds or so and I’d be back to “marrying weight.”
A young man paced the sidewalk nervously as I approached Church for Matins. We exchanged names, his sounding middle-eastern.
“I’m an inquirer,” he said. “First time in an Orthodox Church?” “Yes.” “What drew you?”
Notable hesitation, then one word: “Repentance.”
“You picked a good Sunday for that. The theme is the parable of the Prodigal Son. Do you know it?”
“No. I just started reading Matthew.”
(Edited to make me sound slicker than I was.)
So I summarized the parable for him and then left to do my part in the services.
Seldom have we had someone starting as such a “clean slate,” innocent of any knowledge of the faith.
But remarkable, too, that seldom have we had someone give a confident answer that “repentance” is what drew him. That is probably the very best of all possible answers. I don’t know where he got it.
He stayed all three hours through the Divine Liturgy. I think God’s up to something in this young man.
Gotta love the winking title: “What’s the Over/Under on Sports Betting Reform?“
My (limited) courtroom practice was mostly in State courts, but I am terribly proud of the Federal Courts standing for the rule of law.
(possibly paywalled, but I tried)
24 hours ago, I got flu symptoms that really laid me low.I’m pretty sure I’m pulling out of it now, but somehow, with zero calories consumed yesterday I gained 1.9 pounds. (Tests for Influenza A & B plus Covid were all negative.)
Chorus rehearsals resumed last night. Spring Concert is for America’s 250th.
Some of those patriotic songs, especially ones with a jingoist flavor, are especially hard to sing these day.
The National Anthem holds up surprisingly well if you make the battle ideological rather than physical.
When my great-grandchildren ask what I did in the counter-revolution, I can say “I blogged” (and never voted for the guy). But then I’ll have to explain what a blog was.
An obituary in this morning’s New York Times reminds me: I’ve seen many scandals in my life, but I loved Bill Cosby so much that his probably hurt the worst.
Q: Why Can’t I Use What I Have? - Front Porch Republic
A: Because we own you.
After I’ve bought so many books from Amazon, and as many books as I’ve put on my Amazon Wishlist, it’s astonishing to see how utterly, bloody clueless their ‘Recommended for you” book emails are.
In reality, I’ve long believed that there is a weird market failure in American culture. There are a lot of shows on politics, business and technology, but there are not enough on the fundamental questions of life that get addressed as part of a great liberal arts education: How do you become a better person? How do you find meaning in retirement? Does America still have a unifying national narrative? How do great nations recover from tyranny?
I don’t know what he’s up to, but David Brooks’s hints about what he’ll do after departure from the New York Times are tantalizing.