Joel Pierce

Given how consolidated the publishing industry is, it's weird to me that the big publishers didn't just get together and sue for equity in all these LLM companies based on their value deriving largely from stealing the publishers' IP. Instead they're content to settle for pennies from licensing.

My publisher has sent me an opt-in request for licensing my book to GenAI companies. Since I know it's already in copyright-violating datasets that these companies have used to train their models, feels a bit like shutting the door after the horse has bolted.

Opinion | They Let Their Children Cross the Street, and Now They’re Felons

This is horrific. I can't imagine the pain of losing a child and then to have that compounded by being charged with a felony and jailed with a $1.5 million bail (and separated from their six other kids), all for letting their ten year-old cross the road on his own.

@abdndivinity.bsky.social

Announcement for Aberdeen Academy of Theology sessions on the Bible as Comedy, Tragedy, and History hosted by Dr Nathaniel Greene which will take place in person on 20 September, 18 October, and 22 November at Fountainhall Church Centre in Aberdeen. Email joel.pierce@abdn.ac.uk for more information.

If you're planning on being around Aberdeen this autumn or can make it to us for the mornings of 20 Sep, 18 Oct, and 22 Nov, please come join us for this exciting series of Aberdeen Academy of Theology workshops on interpreting the Hebrew Bible led by the Univ of Aberdeen's Dr Nathaniel Greene.

YEONSOO GO: 20-YEAR-OLD KOREAN AMERICAN PASTOR'S DAUGHTER AND PURDUE UNIVERSITY STUDENT WITH LEGAL VISA- ABDUCTED AND DETAINED BY ICE

TAE HEUNG "WILL" KIM: KOREAN AMERICAN PH.D. STUDENT & MEDICAL RESEARCHER AT TEXAS A&M, LAWFUL PERMANENT U.S. RESIDENT - ABDUCTED AND DETAINED BY ICE

A growing number of the new victims of Trump’s cruel, illegal ICE terror are young Asian Americans with LEGAL STATUS who have grown up their entire lives in this country and are being swept up for minor infractions or technicalities.

Having listened to the episode, Klein does a good job challenging Hazony and pushing him on the incoherence of the whole NatCon project. It's a polite conversation, but one in which Klein does a sort of Socratic disassembly of Hazony's whole position.

Yeah, I've still not heard any sort of business model that makes sense of these companies' valuations or justifies this sort of money put into infrastructure.

Okay, having read the article, it's truly one of the most bizarre things I've ever read. It's like he was simultaneously high and sleep deprived and just wrote whatever highly-literate associative nonsense erupted from his head. Bonkers that this was published.

Starmer hopes ‘pathway to peace’ will end Gaza war. History is not on his side From Balfour declaration to Tony Blair, UK has struggled to drive meaningful progress towards peace in Middle East

It's really frustrating when 'history' is set against justice in the way it is in this headline. A record of historical failures is not a record of the necessity of failure, but rather of the contingent choices people made to value things beside a base level of justice. Injustice is not inevitable.

On Wednesday night during a concert at a Nashville-area church, she made a phone call to Republican senator Bill Hagerty's office on speakerphone. She left a voicemail. "Hi, Senator Hagerty, hi, this is Amy Grant," she said. "I'm standing on stage singing to over a thousand people, and I wanted to speak on behalf of all of us to say that President Trump's budget suggests that funding for PEPFAR should be cut by 50 percent this year. We want you to know that here in Nashville we want to see full funding of PEPFAR so we can stay on track to end the HIV/AIDS epidemic by 2030."

“Hi, Senator Hagerty, hi, this is Amy Grant,” she said. “I’m standing on stage singing to over a thousand people … We want you to know that here in Nashville we want to see full funding of PEPFAR so we can stay on track to end the HIV/AIDS epidemic by 2030.” www.christianitytoday.com/2025/06/amy-...

Israeli public figures call for ‘crippling sanctions’ on Israel over Gaza starvation Thirty-one high-profile Israelis accuse Tel Aviv of ‘brutal campaign’ and demand permanent ceasefire in letter

'The mounting international horror over the trajectory of Israel’s war in Gaza is increasingly being reflected inside Israel itself – and within the wider global Jewish diaspora – amid images of emaciated Palestinian children and reports of the shooting by Israeli forces of hungry Palestinians...'

Yeah, it's pretty disheartening how many books by Christian conservative intellectuals weave all their erudition and theoretical sophistication around the one unshakeable conviction that because gay people have attained a measure of social acceptance, society must be going down the toilet.

When I did a story on conditions in migrant hotels, there was a woman who would have to wash the spicy sauce off the pasta - in the sink - because there was no meal suitable for her toddler. She felt like a bad mum who couldn’t feed her own child

Pause for three minutes and soak up the grace of this man.

Earlier today, the father of three U.S. Marines, Narciso Barranco, spoke publicly for the first time after being pinned to the ground and savagely punched by ICE agents while they arrested the landscaper outside the IHOP where he worked.

Pope Leo: “Many migrants, refugees & displaced persons are privileged witnesses of hope [as] they demonstrate this daily through their resilience & trust in God, [while facing] adversity seeking a future [of] integral human development & happiness.” www.americamagazine.org/faith/2025/0...

Yeah, though here in the UK I wonder how much it's just anti-incumbency bias with Conservatives discredited, SNP too long in power, and Labour and Scottish Greens not looking particularly competent. I did stop the small though very friendly Lib Dems' tent and it made me feel a bit better.

Pretty discouraging to see a large Reform UK tent at our local agricultural show. I thought people in Aberdeenshire would know enough immigrants via the international nature of the oil sector and about how bad Brexit has been on farming to be immune to this nonsense, but evidently not.

Blind date: ‘Pick a number higher than 10. The company, restaurant and atmosphere were simply the best’ Imelda, 56, a local authority officer, meets Jayesh, 66, who works in medical devices

This is quite sweet. Probably my favourite of these they done.

More than 100 humanitarian groups warn of mass starvation in Gaza A joint statement says the Israeli government's "siege" has left aid supplies "totally depleted".

Even if every slander against Palestinians I have ever heard were true (which they are not), there would be no justification for this genocidal cruelty. None.

This has long since passed the point of complex narratives and contested histories.

‘We faced hunger before, but never like this’: skeletal children fill hospital wards as starvation grips Gaza For months Israel kept food shipments to Gaza far below starvation rations. Now the death toll is rising rapidly

A Palestinian mother in Gaza: “My children have become skeletal, skin and bone. Even the slightest effort makes them dizzy. They are asking for food, and I have nothing to give. I can’t lie and say I’ll bring them something when I know I won’t be able to.”

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

The Diane Abbott row shows how impoverished Britain’s conversations about race have become | Jason Okundaye We should be able to discuss the different ways in which minorities are racialised in a thoughtful – and sometimes confronting – way, says Guardian writer Jason Okundaye

"Our public discussions on race are utterly impoverished, and this is largely because our haughty institutions have developed a preference to either run scared or dismiss real discourse rather than challenge, engage and understand."

It's really troubling that this sort of silly argument which would get you a failing grade in an intro economics course seems to be Labour Party orthodoxy now.

And think about all those poor Americans. With around 300 million people wages must be miniscule, at least a lot less than Mexicans' since Mexico only has 130 million people. Or wait... maybe a country's population size has nothing to do with wage levels?

If increasing the number of workers in an economy drives down wages (as Hinder argues here) then maybe the golden age was 1850. With only 17 million people in the UK, factory workers must have been making bank (and Dickens was just making all that poverty stuff up). That's how this works right?

Racism takes different forms..it's all racism and it's all appalling and must be resisted but it's idiotic not to think racism doesn't take different forms.

Do you know what it takes to live in my skin? And I'm aware that my brown skin doesn't get half of the hate that someone with black skin does

Shopping the SCM Press sale today, it's bonkers how within 2-3 years the pandemic went from being 'The New Normal' referred to in a couple of these titles to something we've all conveniently memory-holed.

I can't decide if this is seminary weirdness, rich people weirdness, or seminary in the thrall of a rich donor weirdness. Probably all of the above. Anyway it's weird.

Opportunity for a virtual fellowship for a scholar/student from Gaza : rul.st-andrews.ac.uk/call-for-app...