🎃👻 Jonathan Creeps 💀🎃

I’ll be honest: this is making me want to watch Megalopolis

a man in a red coat with a dragon on the front ALT: a man in a red coat with a dragon on the front

Put on Francis Ford Coppola’ Bram Stoker’s Dracula. We’ll see how far I get before bedtime, but this is wild

Posting to read later

Rolling around the hermeneutic circle backwards

Oh yeah that’s like his move

I used to be a lot more philosophy grumpy on the old website, but it’s fun to pepper it back in here and there

Aristotle says you should begin from the way people commonly talk, but he never *ends* there, ya know?

Sometimes folks argue we are using the wrong word to name something, because that word means X; we should use this other word (commonly synonymous with first), bc it means Y.

I also own a dictionary, but I’d prefer you just tell me what your theory is and then call it whatever word you want.

Whoa, Judge Perry says the Feds’ declarations about unrest at ICE facilities are not credible because some of the incidents they cite in their declarations were separately no-billed by grand juries

I sometimes encounter this attitude among military & LEO that the state should unconditionally back their uses of force because their job is difficult.

This is precisely backwards: their job will be difficult bc the state backs their use of force & this must be subject to stringent conditions

The historical parallels are glaring.

FROG 🐸 SEMIOTICS 🐸 REDEMPTION 🐸 ARC

It was two OUP books.

Today my daughter's preschool is holding a farewell assembly for one of her classmates whose mother has no choice but to self deport. The school is hoping it will be joyful in tone, so we might make this less upsetting for this 3 year old.

There's just no words for the uselessness of this cruelty.

There is a residue of virtue (and the friend I remember) in his clarity and unwillingness to lie about what he thinks. It’s just that what he thinks is horrifying.

Anyway, I think I am going to buy an inflatable frog suit so that I don’t buy a firearm

I told her that it sounds like he might have some trouble fulfilling his oath to the US Constitution and should maybe resign from govt service.

I cling to Lonergan’s definition of authority: the legitimate exercise of a community’s delegated power

I don’t want to make this about how Catholicism is very cool so I’ll start by admitting other communities have organs of judgment and intellectual norming. I can’t help but notice how useful it is to slow down a family member’s rant by gently citing bishops and Rome and other judgments.

Reminds me of a church dad who got radicalized into some double-predestination theology & kept sending me emails to try to persuade me to share his view.

But, like, my brother in Christ, isn’t it obvious I’m already among the reprobate if you have to send this email?

Evil, stupid, etc.

It’s a good question tho

Or anyway it meant to tell the church something about how to behave, rather than the state.

My friend served in Iraq with the US Army before going into special forces and then to Afghanistan, and in many ways I think the person I grew up with died in those wars.

When I was a young Hauerwas-ian post-liberal, at least I knew my views were un-American.

And, of course, I was a pacifist.

“…they defy God’s truth. I seek a unified Christian society where families thrive under God’s values. The 19th Amendment should be repealed. My identity is in Christ. I urge you to repent.”

So that’s… cool.

A childhood friend sent this to my *mom*:

“I’m a Christian Nationalist, rooted in God’s Word. I demand all illegal immigrants & H1B visa holders be removed to protect our nation’s sovereignty & biblical order. Secular, progressive, & communist ideologies must be eradicated, as…”

this is the vibe I imagine for Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem. Roman soldiers trying to look tough and the city residents ostentatiously having a good time

I think Portland has figured out how to make these guys look like complete idiots and I want all the cities to do this. Not telling you what to do… but. Everybody act like it’s the best wedding reception ever and/or a Thanksgiving Day parade.

Can you put into words what that purpose is? You and the frog have really become icons of this protest. There’s been a nice overall whimsy that has shown up. The frog is amazing. We had a bunch of other inflatable people here last night, too. I saw people playing Twister the other day. What they rely on is fear. So by coming out in an absurdist manner, it speaks to them, to some extent, that we’re actually not that afraid. It also dismantles their narrative a little bit. When they try to describe this situation as “war-torn,” it becomes much harder to take them seriously when they have to post a video saying [U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security] Kristi Noem is up on the balcony staring over the Antifa Army and it’s, like, eight journalists and five protesters and one of them is in a chicken suit.

www.wweek.com/culture/2025...