Reading Time: 4 minutes Our “AI” world is here. What remains to be seen, and navigated, is how we’ll integrate large language models (LLMs) in the coming months and years into our workflow. When OpenAI’s Chat GPT-4 launched on March 14, the announcement came with a significant number of use cases that illustrate some of the paths for this […]
News
The latest breaking news and journalistic reporting from a secular perspective at OnlySky, a secular community for nonreligious Americans.
Posted inCulture
UnKoching: No Masters, No [Corporate] Gods
Reading Time: 3 minutes The case for a secular society has been made by our movement. Now we must organize and build power to realize it. I came to UnKoch My Campus in need of a job and figured that I could help a rag-tag group of unorganized co-founders build a digital program to “fight undue influence” and bring […]
Posted inPolitics
America is a liberal nation with a democracy problem
Reading Time: 6 minutes Above and beyond intentional voter suppression, American politics is designed to make some votes count more than others. What reforms could make this country a genuine democracy?
Posted inEconomics
Three bank crashes in three days
Reading Time: 4 minutes After a 68 percent drop in deposits at the end of 2022, and a 48 percent workforce layoff in January, Silvergate Capital, a major lender in the crypto industry, announced on Wednesday that it would be liquidating and winding down operations. Its stock dropped 36 percent in after-hours trading. On Thursday, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) […]
Posted inFree Expression
UK pupils suspended for damaging Qu’ran
Reading Time: 4 minutes Four pupils have been suspended from a school in West Yorkshire, UK, for damaging a Muslim holy book. The incident took place last week at Kettlethorpe High School in Wakefield in the north of England, although the Headteacher has claimed that there was “no malicious intent” concerning the students involved. A non-Muslim Year 10 (14- […]
Posted inCulture
Refugee camp blaze highlights world’s increasing precarity
Reading Time: 3 minutes Imagine losing everything again, and again, and again. In Kutupalong, a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh, some 12,000 human beings didn’t have to imagine a thing this Sunday, when a fire razed 2,000 shelters in what is considered the world’s largest refugee camp. Also wiped out were 35 mosques, 21 learning centers, and an array […]
Posted inNews
Donald Trump drops a single featuring the January 6th prison choir
Reading Time: 2 minutes Friends, Romans, and countrypeeps, lend me your ears! And sit down for a minute. Caesar may be dead, but the song of conspiracy is still being sung loudly throughout the republic. The evil that men do outlives their term in office. Sometimes that evil takes the form of a charity single former President Donald J […]
Posted inRacial justice
Legislator’s dashiki invites sting of systemic racism
Reading Time: 3 minutes As an American traveling the world over the years, I noticed with curiosity that, especially in foreign cities, people generally dressed as Americans do—clad not in their traditional garb but in Western-style (global West, not Wild West) shirts and pants, blouses and skirts. They did this despite their own indigenous fashions being, in my view, […]
Posted inPolitics
It’s not bigoted to criticize Kate Forbes. Sometimes, in politics, religion is fair game
Reading Time: 7 minutes On 20th February, Kate Forbes, a Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for the Scottish National Party (the governing party in Scotland, and the third largest party in British politics), joined the race to become their new Leader and thus the Frist Minister of Scotland. Later that day, in an interview with The Scotsman newspaper, […]
Posted inEducation
Why we need public school: Pluralism is how progress happens
Reading Time: 4 minutes [Previous: What rights do parents have over their children’s education?] The battle over public schools is a clash of values. There’s no such thing as neutral or value-free education. Every choice about what to present or what to omit from the classroom carries ideological weight. That’s why red-state politicians want to present one version of […]