Well done, Arkansas State Parks, for rewarding a New Year’s hike! We tried a new trail at Devil’s Den State Park to kick off 2025 this year, and were happy to receive these stickers in the mail this week.
An Apple Shortcut to pray the Daily Office
In an ideal world, I pray the Daily Office with real books and by candlelight. In this world, I often find myself listening to Morning and Evening Prayer. Over the break I created this Shortcut that will load and play the correct audio Office depending on the time of day. You can edit or remove the “Prayer Intentions” popup as needed. The audio is from the folks at Forward Movement. It is faithfully updated with Readings for Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer every single day—something sorely lacking in the dozens of versions of the audio Daily Office I have tried to date.
Merry Christmas, from our filthy animals to yours!
A window pops up, blocking content, to encourage you to download the app for a better reading experience. In the app, a window pops up, blocking content, to encourage you to rate the app, since it is a better reading experience than the website. Because, remember, on the website a window pops up…
This is a key to the permanent home of Coram Deo Academy of Dallas! This campus was founded in 2006, and has been searching for a permanent home since 2018. Generations of families will benefit from the work of this community at this time; laudate Dominum.
If the goal of AI is to be on par with human sales representatives, then AI has arrived. Which is to say: AI is as bad as human sales representatives.
N.B. These offers are not even accurate when you follow the links.
An interesting homophone of topics from the last two podcasts I listened to: Serie A and Syria.
Men in Blazers for the former, and Honestly for the later.
meat + fire + patience
Thanksgiving week reading:
- Finished The Man Who Was Thursday
- Started Shield the Joyous
- Started The Medieval Mind of C.S. Lewis
Oil and parts are not necessarily cheap, but it still remains a joy to pay the same to DIY an oil change on two vehicles—with full synthetic oil plus cabin, oil, and engine filters—for less than it costs to have someone else do the same for just one of your vehicles.
When I am able to sneak away for one night silent retreats, I often do so at a nearby Jesuit retreat center. A room was not available this week, so I took Bandit with me for one night of solo camping near Muenster, TX. It did not disappoint!
Audere est facare, indeed.
Are churches and schools trying to fully digitize their lives through over-reliance on a website, overuse of social media, and a felt need to embrace artificial intelligence at the same time that parents and parishioners are trying to wean themselves off these very things?
My latest favorite browser tool is Stay Free. In addition to outright blocking a myriad of domains to avoid distraction and doomscrolling, I also am a big fan of their Limits on the Go mode. Websites on this list will prompt you for a session-specific time limit each time you visit that site.
The Premier League instability at the top these past few matches is all fun and games until your team is responsible for Ipswich picking up their first PL win in over twenty years. At home. Come on (good grief), you Spurs!
In this bodies we will live; in these bodies we will die. Where you invest your love, you invest your life. Awake my soul. For you were made to meet your maker.
My goodness, do yourself a favor and watch the highlights of Real Madrid and Dortmund from today’s match.
The legendary Ray Hudson with the call. A poet of the beautiful game!
His legs are on fire, his heart is racing, but his head is in the refrigerator.
He knows where the goalposts are; he knows they ain’t movin’. He detonates this one with with extreme accuracy.
He moves in mysterious ways, as those old Irish lads used to sing.
While in New York on a family vacation we stopped by the Burke Library at Columbia to grab a quick picture with my Galatians book. Our youngest’s best question after we found it in the stacks: “Did you really think all of those words??”
St. Alphonsus on Uniformity with God's Will
I stumbled upon this brief text at church today, written by the 18th century Italian St. Alphonsus de Liguori. His distinction between conformity with God’s will and uniformity is helpfully described in the definitions below. And in the illustration that follows he excellently explains why it matters—what is to be gained through the pursuit of uniformity. Conformity is bending our will to the will of God. Uniformity is making one will of God’s will and ours, so that we will only what God wills; that God’s will alone is our will.
I am wrapping up an essay on three recent tech commercials that each typify a distinct approach to the role of technology: (1) technology as a tool, (2) technology as an Everything Machine, and (3) technology as a replacement for human activity. The commercials are from Instacart, Apple, and Google.