I feel like I shouldn’t have to say this, but if your post is so long you need a “TL;DR,” it should go at the top of your post, not the bottom. The whole point of a “TL;DR,” is that your post was too long and I didn’t read to the bottom.
Currently reading: Murder at the Dacha by Alexei Bayer đź“š
Finished reading: O Pioneers! by Willa Cather đź“š
St. Seraphim of Sarov Orthodox Church, in Santa Rosa, California, right after vespers
Whenever I fly, I am surprised by the number of people whose phones are instantly on TikTok or equivalent the moment they are allowed to turn off Airplane Mode. I am no paragon when it comes to avoiding my phone, but my knee jerk impulses go quite another way.
Finished reading: Everyday Saints and Other Stories by Archimandrite Shevkunov đź“š
Finished reading: The Church at Prayer by Aimilianos (Simōnopetritēs, Archimandritēs.) 📚
22-year-old actress Jenna Ortega on AI
From a Hollywood Reporter interview with her and Tim Burton: I just see what’s happening to young people and the kind of content AI is creating. It’s taking out the humanity and we’re getting further from the truth. You wonder why people are anxious and depressed, and it’s because not everything that they’re seeing is meant to be digested. It’s junk food for the brain. It’s not real. It’s not attainable.
Beam/Speck
From a defense of the Old Believer practice of prostrating on Sunday, a useful reminder: Sometimes, the individual doesn’t know any canons, but are repeating something they heard and assume to be true. Other times, they may know a few of the major ones that they know other groups violate - such as the canons on the dating of Pascha - that it cannot precede or fall on the Jewish Passover, which they know from the problems of the Gregorian Calendar.
Finished reading: Have His Carcase by Dorothy L. Sayers.
Not awful, but too long. (To begin with, pages and pages of practical cryptography could have been honorably omitted without any violence to the plot.) Call it 3/5 — fine, won’t reread.