sweater weather sara

The Loneliness Machines How AI Companions Are Quietly Replacing Human Connection for Vulnerable Children

"The children I am hearing about are not addicted to screens, they are addicted to being understood without effort, soothed without challenge, and accompanied without the fear of rejection. And they are learning to expect that from the world." thisiskirra.substack.com/p/the-loneli...

Why yes, it IS advising season

trying to have this conversation with college students who think that they'll never have trouble getting a job with a CS degree but will starve in the gutter with something like a neuroscience degree or a humanities degree is my Sisyphean task

the distinctions exist for us and in our understanding, not in God

I think the hardest thing for many Christians to grasp in theology is that in God there is no division, no contradiction. God's mercy is God's love is God's justice is God's glory, etc.

Crazy how every technological innovation is immediately used to make sexual harassment of women a more ubiquitous and caustic price of admission for women’s existence in the public’s sphere and everyone is like “It’s sad that there is no possible way to regulate this.”

here's the page for Brown's: lgbtq.brown.edu/events-progr...

does vanderbilt's LGBTQ center have a TGNC closet or something like that? Most universities I've been at have one and are often looking for donations of that kind, so folks can try things out for free

ah yes, "i am a priest but i am not your priest"

turns out that having a fever during a heat wave is extremely miserable

She also, notably, picked out a lot of photos where she looks GREAT. But I think it's a great gift to give folks - even pulling together a GoogleDoc of preferences and a folder of photos (that's what i currently have) - and one that more people should do

My grandma was a planner & so well before she died she drafted her obituary and compiled all of the photos she wanted displayed at her funeral. It was a great act of love for all of us.

She wasn't sick or anything, just knew she was getting older and wanted to take a burden off of her family.

The “deal” that Brown made with the Trump admin is much more extreme than is being reported. It includes government oversight of course evaluations and no barrier to government interference in faculty hiring.

Read it for yourself here:

www.brown.edu/sites/defaul...

*vomits*

I love my Oasis notebooks and my wife uses them with her fountain pens and loves them.

Also a sucker for Ardium as my planner/commonplace notebook

i pray to God they have good supports around them because i cannot imagine what this is like for them.

i need to get offline because the absolute lack of focus on the victims is really getting to me. we're talking about girls and young women who were systematically trafficked, assaulted, and deeply harmed and they've fallen out of the narrative.

no joke, this site is how I learned to cook for myself in grad school & a bunch of my dinner staples come from Budget Bytes

"everyone's a little broken and everyone belongs" also works VERY well Eucharistically

Obviously, a huge part of the Columbia shakedown is about conservative angst over admissions, but they're also shaking down George Mason, which accepts 90% of its undergraduate applicants. Much like with USAID, they think that if they find the right button, they can simply turn liberalism off.

one of my most memorable easter vigil sermons was when someone preached Chrysostom's Paschal homily! (I would say *read*, but they *preached* it.) we have riches in our history!

SAME, but been doing it for six months

I'm not convinced judgement is the right response to such things, but I'm also not convinced it's the wrong one. But I do wonder about how vulnerability has become such a fraught thing that its rewards aren't worth the risk.

I really struggle with the rise of AI-chatbots used for companionship because ultimately they're a
simulacrum of intimacy, connection, and the mortifying ordeal of being known. However, some of the young people I know don't want the risks that come with those things, so they settle for the chatbot.

When asked why they went to ChatGPT instead of a classmate for homework help, I often hear that it's because ChatGPT takes less time/effort and won't think they're dumb. Or, when they use chatbot to talk to about their feelings, it's because they want to feel heard without the risk of vulnerability

I'm seeing this a bit more with the young adults in my life -- not AI lovers, but AI friends -- and it's worrisome to me. When I hear them explain why, it's usually a mix of (1) convenience and (2) intense fear of rejection.

a more capable interviewer would have pushed her on that

She did some real dancing around the question of "authority;" constantly flipping between "I just read the Bible and encourage my listeners to read the Bible!" and "so many evangelical pastors are too soft and so I tell my followers not to listen to them."

I tried to read the transcript using library access through my work and I only made it halfway through before feeling like I was suffering brain damage

🙏