Scott Maybell

Reinventing tax season as #TaxSeason.

I had the inverse experience walking into the theater in England and assuming "Zootropolis" was just the name for Zootopia 2.

This is what academic New Testament studies is like.

Coming soon! (I just wrote a chapter, but very excited about this project)

www.bloomsbury.com/uk/esoteric-...

That's awesome! I don't remember any non-philosophy folks being in my logic classes, but I bet that makes for a fun class dynamic :)

Dudes not doing dumb stunts is a recession indicator.

Subjective personal experience: most of the benefit I could have gotten from upper-division logic were things I had learned from programming. Logic was still fun, but not a mental "leap" for me like my first programming class, but probably only due to the order I studied them.

🖌️

Signs me up for atheism Two months ago, Media Club Plus did an episode recapping and critically discussing M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs (2002). I am a huge fan of the show, I highly recommend giving the movie a watch and th…

A couple of months ago, Media Club Plus / Friends at the Table published a great episode recapping + critiquing M. Night Shymalan's Signs (2002). I try to explicate their critique of the movie's take on theism/atheism, pulling a little from Brook Ziporyn's recent book:

haliphron.ink/2025/11/24/s...

Loving the enabler:spouse ratio in these replies.

Oh wow, it's funny I heard about the news from your post lol (I'm a former Mormon). This is actually a huge deal, women were set up to go on missions later as a way to pressure them to get married young (i.e. pre-mission-age).

Swamp Thing and the Imago Nihil Theologians, especially Christians, in the Science & Religion field have often been interested in the concept of the imago dei, the idea that humans were created “in the image of God” (see: Hef…

We have been reading Swamp Thing to facilitate discussion about green religions, ecospirituality, pantheism, & similar topics on campus. I argue the comic presents an alternative to Science & Religion research on the imago dei: give it up, and find the sacred there. haliphron.ink/2025/11/22/s...

This was a great watch. As Ismael notes, physicists have long known the physical impossibility of Laplace's demon, but this video gave a wonderful breakdown of its logical problems I had never considered before!

Because of so-called AI we're past the old discourse of concern about online misinformation, but back when I worked at a rec center I'd find kids watching videos about how Jackson wasn't dead or footage of his "ghost." It was upsetting and we didn't get any training on how to handle stuff like that.

This is very lovely! I'm working on a paper rn about magic's marginalization in philosophy and theology depts, definitely struggling with the not sounding stupid part.

The trinitarian Father/Son/Holy Spirit/God Is Not/Is triangle chart.

Call for Papers: Special Panel on Reality Shifting in Gen-Z Putting out a CFP from my friends and colleagues at SWPACA, due this week on the 14th. Details at: CFP: Special Panel on Reality Shifting in Gen-Z : Area for Esotericism, Occultism, and Magic at So…

CFP due this Friday for a special panel on reality shifting and manifestation in Gen Z religiosity.

Description: haliphron.ink/2025/11/10/c...

Relevant paper: www.zygonjournal.org/article/id/1...

A peaceful, totally nonthreatening, country mouse 🐀

Bees and dogs can see "impossible colors" too, I don't understand what the big deal is.

I've not found anyone putting Moore's Neonomicon in conversation with LaValle's Ballad or the writings of W. H. Pugmire, but the (dis)continuities between their engagement with the Lovecraftian tradition re: race and sexuality should be looked at closely.

All About Alienation: Alan Moore On Lovecraft And Providence | The Quietus Towards the end of a recent interview with Alan Moore on his relationship with the writer Iain Sinclair our conversation drifted towards another topic: Moore’s upcoming Lovecraftian work Providence. A...

In preparation for our reading group on Alan Moore's run of Swamp Thing (if you're in Oxford, HMU), we've read Neonomicon. Here's an interview where Moore endorses Graham Harman's book on Lovecraft. It's fun hearing about him learning to appreciate academic philosophy. thequietus.com/culture/book...

A phone wallpaper set of Reze from Chainsaw Man

had an idea (wallpapers are below!)

Chainsaw Man Reze Arc: Lean Into the Diabology! Chainsaw Man is perhaps my favorite anime and manga, so I was anticipating last month’s release of the Reze Arc film. Technically, Reze’s arc in the manga is a relative low-point, and t…

The Chainsaw Man film was wonderful, but it shared the weakness of the Reze arc in the manga: the fight sequence is too long and one note. I wrote up some of my thoughts on how the sequence could have been altered with dynamic stakes and more Reze characterization.

haliphron.ink/2025/11/05/c...

The Birth of Analytic Philosophy Out of the Spirit of McCarthyism Analytic philosophy, the hegemonic branch of the discipline in the US, often thinks of itself as above history and politics. But its rise, and its enduring influence, are owed to McCarthyism, which pu...

Slight context if you're not familiar: the book and the review are a continuation/development of a conversation on Jacobin back in 2023. Besides Nick French, Ben Burgis describes himself as an analytic Marxist.

jacobin.com/2023/01/anal...

jacobin.com/2023/01/anal...

Citation: Schmidt-Leukel, Perry. "The Demonisation of the Other through the Narrative of Māra’s Defeat (Māravijaya)." In Buddhism and Its Religious Others: Historical Encounters and Representations, edited by C.V. Jones London: British Academy, 2022. Text reads: While all three colonial powers had primarily economic interests, they were nevertheless experienced by Sri Lankan Buddhists also as a religious threat manifesting itself by forced conversions and temple destructions (and the purported destruction of the holy tooth relic) under the Portuguese, by discriminating legislation under the Dutch and increased missionary efforts under the British. A Sri Lankan folktale about the ‘Carpenter Heretic Demon’ (tirtthaka pretaya), written down in 1762 but apparently with a longer preceding history of oral transmission, presents Jesus as a ‘Son of the Evil One’, i.e. a ‘son of Māra’ (mā raput). Māra sends him to earth in order to revive all non-Buddhist ‘heresies’, by which Māra keeps the world under his control. Jesus is conceived by a carpenter girl living in ‘Sāgala’. When grown up, he rst settles in Portugal, where he falsely declares himself to be the son and incarnation (avatā raya) of a god and the saviour of humanity. When expelled from Portugal, he and his disciples travel through many countries spreading the same message before they nally return to Sāgala. His followers pretend to be awakened saints (arahats) but are actually a gang of thieves. Dressed in black robes, they steal cattle at night, eat meat and drink liquor. After being betrayed by a follower, Jesus is caught and subsequently executed. Yet Māra and other demons fake his resurrection in order to achieve their final goal and re-establish the heresies.

Found an interesting chapter which details an anti-colonial Sri Lankan folk tale which describes Jesus as an avatar of Mara ("the Buddhist devil" in oversimplifying terms), sent to trick the world to trap people in samsara (citation in alt-text).

If you ever get the chance to try Algerian food... It's one of the most underlooked cuisines 😵

Thomas goes to check the wound on Christ's hand, sees that He has six fingers that are all the same length.

"Under the Dome: Hygenoparasocial Relational Dynamics in the Stephen King Fandom Community"

Once the carnists are finished at the reeducation camp there'll be no need for illiberal enforcement!

(great read, frustratingly honest about how practically tough the problem is)