@joybrennan
Reading and writing Buddhist philosophy, esp Yogacara & Zen. Teaching religion and philosophy at Kenyon College, leading Kokosing Zen Center (https://www.kokosingzencenter.org/), raising my daughter, learning the native trees & plants of central Ohio
I've been fortunate enough to meet many formidably smart, fully committed, & thoroughly decent people who, for years, have strived to try to avert dangerous climate change.
They failed.
Saying that does not lessen my gratitude to them, 1/11
www.technosphere.earth/yes-we-can-n...
This is such a fun thread to read. One grandpa, WW 1 vet, installed boilers for the East Ohio Gas Co. Other grampa, WW 2 vet, worked at the bomber factory in Cleveland, and then helped put in I-90, and later was a janitor for the Cleveland Metroparks.
Where did this distilling of cedar oil happen? I assume it's regional?
Important insight in this post.
My framing: That freedom of religion claims at the supreme court have *mostly* been brought by conservative religious groups has meant that religion itself has been wed, in the American political imagination, to conservative causes. But that has never been accurate.
"Politically correct" has always meant, to them, not needlessly hurting people. "He's not going to be politically correct" means that he will hurt whomever he wants, whenever he wants, for whatever reason, or no reason at all.
Thank you for this. It made me realize that probably all moralists are nihilists. They fear that if they don't cling to some idea of morally perfect action in the morally perfect society, all that waits (for them and others) is a dark abyss.
Yikes!
My mother was a teacher at my high school, which was horrible, but now I am the middle aged mother of an almost tween daughter. So I don't know if I am cringing with your daughter or laughing with you.
Yes, that's the nearest thing. And completely not worth the externalizations. And also, I have to write a lot of emails, but they are really, really not that difficult. I would find it way more burdensome to read tiresome mind-numbing drafts written by the probabilistic text generator!
Excellent analogy. Thank you.
Yes 💯.
Also "what are you proposing?" only works if there is a problem that needs to be solved. What problem is "AI" solving? Too many humans doing stuff humans like to do, like writing, drawing and photography?
but why build data centres at all?
One way to know we can ignore or condemn a book is when the author has to apologize for something/make disclaimers about their suitability to write on the topic *in the introduction*. It's a sign to put down the pen and walk away. But, yes, vanity.
The assault at OSU underscores the contentious role of OSU's Chase Center, an "intellectual diversity" center forced onto OSU by Ohio lawmakers. The Chase Center has been widely criticized for its limited accountability in hiring & curriculum & lack of responsibilities to the university.
We should try to trans this society to nonbinary
I think it was last week.
The three stages of how LLM's turn original writing into generic, boring and dangerous writing: 1) metaphorical cleansing; 2) lexical flattening; 3) structural collapse, which leaves "behind a syntactically perfect but intellectually void shell."
Academic and popular interest in nonreligion has risen in parallel with the growth of religiously unaffiliated populations. In many countries, census and survey questions used to measure religion have been modified to better capture nonreligious identities. Little attention has been given to how these changes in measures affect specific claims about the rise of the “nones.” Although there is no doubt that religiously unaffiliated populations have grown in many countries during the twentyfirst century, the degree of such growth has sometimes been exaggerated due to measurement effects. We review methodological issues that affect the estimates of the size of religiously unaffiliated populations and
How Measurement Changes Can Exaggerate the Growth of Religious "Nones"
free for all to read: https://sociologicalscience.com/download/volume-13/february/SocSci_v13_89to108.pdf
😂
A guy in grad school once explained to me his moral dilemma as follows: there were undergrads who would pay him to write their essays, and he wondered if he should do it.
I was like: that is not a moral dilemma...
Today, February 10, 2026, marks the official publication day of “Ocean, As Much As Rain – Stories, Lyrical Prose, and Poems from Tibet” by Tsering Woeser, published by @dukepress.bsky.social, edited and translated by Fiona Sze-Lorrain with Dechen Pemba.
Bring back earnestness and sincerity.
Philosophers never have to learn that society is real, and they (well, we, as I am loosely affiliated) are worse for it.
Here's another one, with a shocking $ amount attached:
news.nd.edu/news/notre-d...
Higashi Honganji Temple, the world’s second largest wooden building. Absolutely magnificent. The interiors are stunning. (Sorry, we were not allowed to take photos inside). It is a Shin Buddhist temple. 🕉️
#Japan #Buddhism #travel #life #explore #Kyoto
An oak tree with the sun behind it
Beauty is in the eye of the treeholder
My late & beloved philosophy teacher Dominic Balestra (Doc B as we called him) of Fordham once said "philosophy is about making distinctions." That short phrase has helped me be a clearer thinker ever since.
