Mike Fast

I read that at first as "AI" Michaels, as in Artificial Intelligence, but give it time, I'm sure that's coming, too

What's the point of being this unkind to our fellow human beings?

I'm currently reading Andrew Rillera's Lamb of the Free, which is making a lot of similar points about how we have misunderstood and misapplied the Levitical sacrifices and thus misunderstood Jesus.

Four-letter Balkan capital...Sofi? maybe Buda? Yeah, that's egregious.

I've seen this map before and have some skepticism about its validity. We really believe the Oklahoma Panhandle drinks way less than the Texas Panhandle? Or that excessive drinking stops at the Wisconsin state line?

Have you ever had a horse step on your back?

Or by having the reversal of thinking and feeling, mind and heart (i.e., repentance), that creates the kind of person who sees the weak, the poor, and the trampled-upon as being just as valuable as the rich and powerful and is therefore attracted to follow the Jesus path of love for others.

Director was no doubt afraid you would outshine everyone else on the stage

That sucks. I'm sorry.

I should give the caveat that "Best" as a closing from a friend is fine. It's informal and that makes sense for a friendship. But for business writing, "Best" just grates on me.

brad also hit one of my pet peeves: I do not love the use of "Best" as a closing. "Best regards", sure. But just "Best" is so informal. And I know that finding the proper closing can be a pain--when to use "Thanks", when to use "Sincerely", etc. It's all a holdover from the day of formal letters.

Pretty sure those are north of $400 now. Pricing on everything memory or GPU related went way up this past fall with the AI data center build out.

there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."

J.R.R. Tolkien

"Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing:

We're on the road to freedom
We shall not be moved
We're on the road to justice
We shall not be moved

We shall not, we shall not be moved
We shall not, we shall not be moved
Just like a tree that's planted by the waters
We shall not be moved

and that similarity is more than a coincidence

South Minneapolis Singing Action. That is all.

I firmly believe it has been a real thing, even if it's been too small or too narrow. I don't know what else to do than to blow on the embers of kindness and inclusion and try to fan them into flames.

I would rather rally us behind the Gettysburg Address, the Emma Lazarus poem, the words and actions of MLK Jr and John Lewis, and see who else we can include in that, than to call it hopeless. People I care about are too outnumbered in any sort of might-makes-right, everyone-for-themselves world.

If you say, "No, that's entirely American," then on what basis are you rallying the country to behave differently? If we're going to live in a world without ideals, even ones we fail to live up to, then we're in Stephen Miller's world of might makes right, and that's no good for anyone.

I'm not sure we disagree all that much. But I don't see the point of disagreeing with someone who says, "This is un-American," because we have too often fallen short of that or because we have excluded certain groups from that.

I'm not saying Reagan wasn't awful on AIDS or whatever else. That wasn't my point. JFK got us into Vietnam. Lincoln suspended habeas corpus. But even through all the crap our country did, we didn't forget the ideal. I hope we aren't losing that now, but I worry we are.

Listen to what he said on immigration, for example. He expressed some American ideals very eloquently. I'm not saying his actions or policies lined up with that, but that was kinda my general point. We as Americans have often failed to live up to what we believe in.

It's against American ideals, as expressed in the Declaration of Independence, by abolitionists, by Lincoln, by FDR, in the Marshall Plan, by JFK, by the civil rights movement, even by Reagan, even if our national behavior has often fallen short of that.

I don't think we're ever going back to what was in the before time. In the optimistic world, we craft something new. But I can think of very few societies that have done that successfully, and it always involved a frank wrestling with what had gone wrong.

Which pizza chain does Rupert Murdoch own?

Now I'm hungry

I love the western states and would liketo retire there, but the water situation is a major deterrent to that idea.

I weirdly prefer video podcasts to audio-only podcasts, and not because I want to actually watch the video. I usually have it playing in a browser on one monitor while I do work on the other monitor. But it's somehow reassuring that the voices are less disembodied that way.

Did they catch Santa breaking and entering again?