Reading Time: 6 minutes It’s been a good few months for machine-learning software—and a confusing one for the humans trying to live their best lives around it. Last fall, digital art generators like Midjourney and DALL-E drew the alarm of illustrators, photographers, and other digital artists: not just because the algorithms were trained on data not expressly sanctioned by […]
meaning of life
Posted inThe Future
The overthinking humanist: Life in a world of eight billion
Reading Time: 13 minutes At 4 a.m. on Sunday, I just needed fifteen minutes to finish a news brief. Fifteen minutes, and I’d be ready to leave for a trip to a pueblo two hours away. Fifteen minutes, and I’d switch modes completely: from English to Spanish, from digital to analog, and from the high-minded literary life to something […]
Posted inPhilosophy
Building our own meaning and purpose
Reading Time: 5 minutes The age-old problem of deciphering the meaning of life never gets old as a philosophical project. The word “decipher” here is the wrong word to use from a humanist’s point of view, of course. It is not that meaning is hidden in the fabric of the universe, laid there carefully by some deity for us […]
Posted inMeaning & Purpose
‘So there’s no point to life, then?’
Reading Time: 6 minutes I don’t turn doorknockers away. I give them snacks.
Posted inFilm/TV
What makes a home for ‘All Those Who Wander’?
Reading Time: 8 minutes The first season of Strange New Worlds started with Captain Pike grappling with foreknowledge of a terrible fate that awaits him in Star Trek canon. Meanwhile, Spock this season has struggled with a relationship that The Original Series tells us is doomed. In both cases, SNW made the road to these futures feel uncertain in […]
Posted inThe Secular
As religion falls away, how will we support Generation Z?
Reading Time: 3 minutes A new study from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) shows that Generation Z (born 1997-2012) tends to be less religious and more secular than older generations, and therefore less likely to engage in behaviors such as saying grace or attending church. The authors at AEI note that this demographic shift represents a significant change in […]
Posted inPoetry
We’ve got everything here
Reading Time: < 1 minute We’ve got meds for your head when the going gets tough We’ve got taurine in cans when caffeine’s not enough. We’ve got porno and politics, cartoons and stuff So you don’t have to think when you’re down in the dumps Now this little pill, you can take when you’re ill And it makes you feel better like that And we’ve got plenty more for when you […]
Posted inSecular Symphony
Why are we here?
Reading Time: 8 minutes A couple of months ago, I asked my dad if he thought COVID-19 came from a lab. We were sitting across from each other in a coffee shop several blocks away from my childhood home. It had closed down within the first weeks of lockdown. Seven months later, it was open again, under new management. […]
Posted inGeneral
The Land of Lords and Ladies (LSP #188)
Reading Time: 5 minutes I ran into this story this past week and it made me smile. I hope it has the same effect on you! It’s just one more example of how people try to announce to the world, I was here! This was me! Today, Lord Snow Presides over the land of lords and ladies, and what they say about the human condition.
Posted inReligion
Tim Keller and the Lies He Tells About Death
Reading Time: 10 minutes Christians promise up and down that their product can give people peace of mind about death. It does not. And Tim Keller found that out the hard way, though I doubt a single one of his followers will understand his recent confession.