For my piece on Catholic miracle apologetics, I read (correction: skimmed) a 25,000-word post by rationalist blogger Scott Alexander. My piece, which cited (but does not focus on) his, ended up being a cool 2,700 words. I don't think it would benefit from being longer, and it was the result of me cutting around 70%...

Originally published on my Substack: Insects Matter Not more than people Animal welfare is an issue which cuts across traditional political divisions: it has advocates and opponents on the far right, far left and everywhere in between. Generally, animal welfare is associated with the left, but that link is weak and...

Originally published on my Substack: No one thinks that LLMs are sentient So why are we treating them that way? Jeff Sebo is concerned about ants. He calls on us to imagine, “You notice an ant struggling in a puddle of water. Their legs thrash as they fight to stay afloat. You could walk past, or you could take a...

Originally published on my Substack: Can you argue your way into believing in God? The new generation of online Catholic apologists In a 2021 paper, Fr. Philippe Dalleur argues that this photograph, taken of some of the tens of thousands of witnesses in 1917 in Fátima, Portugal, shows a pattern of "infrared shadows"...

Audience capture is a phenomenon common on social media where, over time, a creator loses their authentic voice and instead tailors their content to the desires of their audience as represented by engagement statistics. Audience capture pushes creators toward "average" forms of expression. Average does not always...

As I am beginning the end of my professional sabbatical, I am increasingly dedicating my time to useless pursuits, specifically thinking about Magic: The Gathering. I only really played Magic seriously for about four years—ages 13 to 17. I have continued to play the game since then, but off and on, and not...

AI text is clogging our minds, and clogging the internet's series of tubes. With tools like Pangram, it is easier than ever to confirm my suspicion that a lot of the text that I encounter online is, unfortunately, AI generated. I want to distinguish between two attitudes towards AI writing. The first is an absolute...

I have played Magic: The Gathering for over twenty years. It is probably my favorite game, but, like many long-term players, I have struggled with disenchantment toward it. When I first got into Magic (at age thirteen), I had a box of Revised-era cards that my brother gave me. Out of those, I made some really...

I am, much to my chagrin, on Twitter. I first joined Twitter in 2011. I deleted my account in 2020 and started posting again in about May of this year, to "develop my writing career." I tend to have what may be anachronistic attitudes toward how people ought to conduct themselves in public discourse. Toward this...

No text in any of my blog posts or essays is AI-generated, with the following exception: I generally run posts through Claude Code with the prompt, "make sure this writing follows the Chicago Manual of Style." I review all suggested changes and reject any that would cause substantive changes to the structure of the...

I wrote an essay for Kernel Magazine, Issue 6 about shrimp welfare Read it at Reboot

I quit my job in January, and have been on a professional sabbatical since then. I have spent the past six weeks in New York, a city I lived in for two years two years ago. New York has always been, to me, a city of fantasy. When I was unhappy in San Francisco, it was imagining a better life in New York that drew me...