Bluesky is still pretty centralized and venture-capital backed. There’s been discussions about monetization. It’s only a matter of time before it enshittifies.
I would argue that Jesus, as Christ/Messiah is also a priest and prophet, thus fulfilling all of the various other prophecies about Him. He is these things and more: God’s decisive revelation of Himself to humanity, as well as one who redefines what humanity fundamentally is.
The reason why Christians have a tense relationship with the other “Abrahamic faiths” has to do with the understanding that Jesus is God. To deny Jesus’ divinity, from a Christian standpoint, is to define God apart from Jesus which is not consistent with Christian belief. The other problem comes from the idea (more or less later introduced into Christianity) that anyone who doesn’t believe in Jesus goes to Hell. This idea, so deeply held by many many Christians, actually misses what the gospel is all about: the minute Jesus forgives His murderers, He effectively declares that there’s no sin beyond His ability to forgive. Which means that all of humanity is forgiven, full stop.
Eastern (Orthodox) Christianity has a very interesting and different view: Hell and Heaven are the same place, just experienced differently—“Heaven” for those who love God on His terms, “Hell” for those who demand God behave on their terms. The basic idea there is that, in the end, most people will come face to face with Jesus and go “oh, it’s you! Cool!” and experience Heaven. But there are those who will see Him and still refuse (at least for a time—I believe that the scriptures are pretty clear that God is merciful and patient and that, given enough time, everyone winds up in “Heaven”).
I would be totally fine with that tbh. Though I wonder if we’ll ever get to the place where a Mastodon client somehow incorporates an algorithmic timeline for those who want that?
I’m still Christian and I adore both bands. David Bazan (Pedro the Lion) is recording some of the most theologically rich music of his career now, back under the Pedro name, as he’s come through his whole wrestling with faith. Not sure what he considers himself these days, but it’s clear that he’s never going to shake his Christian upbringing.
Like MxPx, their inclusion of faith in their lyrics became so much more honest and less forced once they left their Christian music label. They introduced me to punk.
Amazing Grace is one of those songs that uses a particular meter that allows for these kinds of tune changes. You can sing it to the tune of House of the Rising Sun as well (among others). One of my supervising/mentoring priests (Episcopal) from when I was in seminary did a Lent study on Amazing Grace and had people listen to all these different versions.
I feel like the majority of people I see quit Mastodon do so because the platform (and Federation in general) don’t coddle their egos. With no algorithm to game and ingratiate themselves on everyone’s timelines, they make a public exit and talk about how broken Mastodon is and offer their takes on what it needs to be. Which, unsurprisingly, sounds like a non-Elon-ed Twitter.
I love Mastodon. I love discovering new people and accounts by happenstance (and not spoon-feeding).
Praise God other people see this connection! A friend and I have been referring to the GOP as Wimp Lo for the last couple of years and are always sad when others don’t get the reference. It’s perfect!
My wife uses AI tools a lot (while I occasionally talk to Siri). But she uses it for things like: she’s working on a book and so she used it to develop book cover concepts that she then passed along to me to actually design. I feel like this is the sort of thing most of us want AI for—an assistant to help us make things, not something to make the thing for us. I still wrestle with the environmental ethics of this, though.
I’ve had adblockers on my browsers for years and pay for ad-free streaming. I easily went over a decade without seeing an ad on a screen in my own home. But when I’d go to a restaurant that had TVs (or to my mom’s house where she’d run the TV constantly) I’d marvel at how unwatchable it was. Just a constant interruption.
My wife has a friend who produced a TV series for Tubi and so we signed up to check it out and, wow. I had to tap out of watching it because of the ads. Just completely obnoxious and loud.
We don’t have billboards here on O’ahu and it’s great. When I went to visit my family on the continental US (Boston and Florida), it was very annoying and distracting to see them everywhere.
I actually said “bye Fash-licia” to Reddit last week. I thought about trying to get banned for something stupid, just for the story. But instead I just quietly deleted the account.
This. I care about graphic design and aesthetics. So when I send a document to a group for review, I’m not taking the risk of giving them something they could mess with.
The nearest IKEA to me is about
5,0002500 miles away. This picture makes me feel all of them.Edit: I failed to search the actual mileage between my home and the nearest IKEA before posting.