John Carter
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roguebaptist.bsky.social
John Carter
@roguebaptist.bsky.social
Kentuckian. Theologian. Law professor. Posts are my fickle own. Error has rights.
Pinned
“Every day is all there is.”https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/23/realestate/fine-china-memories.html?unlocked_article_code=1.sU4.BlDj.tKz86CpthWgv&smid=bs-share
Yes, It’s OK to Use the Fine China (Gift Article)
Readers fight the decline of fine china by using their “good dishes” for everything from pizza to takeout.
www.nytimes.com
Young adults turn to Quakers' silent worship to offset — and cope with — a noisy world www.latimes.com/world-nation...
Young adults turn to Quakers' silent worship to offset — and cope with — a noisy world
There’s been an unprecedented surge in the numbers of attendees at Sunday worship at the Quaker Arch Street Meeting House in Old City Philadelphia.
www.latimes.com
November 1, 2025 at 5:57 PM
Reposted by John Carter
Pope Leo urged the world's 1.4 billion Catholics on Sunday to care for immigrants, pressing ahead with a message of welcome for migrants days after criticizing U.S. President Donald Trump's hard-line anti-immigration policies. For @reuters.com:
Pope Leo, after Trump critique, urges Catholics to help immigrants
Pope Leo urged the world's 1.4 billion Catholics on Sunday to care for immigrants, pressing ahead with a message of welcome for migrants days after criticizing U.S. President Donald Trump's hard-line anti-immigration policies.
www.reuters.com
October 5, 2025 at 9:29 AM
Reposted by John Carter
Left unchecked, openAI and other infotech providers will destroy any remnants of the American education system that manage to escape the Trump administration.

Read the full thread.
OpenAI's VP for education recently said the company wanted to become "core infrastructure" for schools and universities. Any infrastructure, though, always depends on habituating users to its technical affordances - so I've been trying to track how it's doing that 🧵 www.nytimes.com/2025/06/07/t...
Welcome to Campus. Here’s Your ChatGPT.
www.nytimes.com
September 26, 2025 at 11:03 PM
Reposted by John Carter
This is one thing giant movie studios can still do--the crazy big swing that costs a lot of money and is not tied to an algorithm or concern about "viewer retention rate at minute three"--that no other entity can. It is one reason the film ecosystem still needs them.
if you're a person who doesn't see the unalloyed good in Warner Bros spending $150 million on a loose Pynchon adaptation by Paul Thomas Anderson, we simply do not occupy the same reality
September 26, 2025 at 3:00 PM
Reposted by John Carter
Lou Reed, "September Song" youtu.be/RQsJK0voNRI?...
Lou Reed - September Song
From the 1985 compilation disk Lost In The Stars: The Music Of Kurt Weill
youtu.be
September 30, 2023 at 6:31 PM
Reposted by John Carter
Happy Large Boulder the Size of a Small Boulder Day to all who celebrate!
January 27, 2025 at 6:41 PM
“Every day is all there is.”https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/23/realestate/fine-china-memories.html?unlocked_article_code=1.sU4.BlDj.tKz86CpthWgv&smid=bs-share
Yes, It’s OK to Use the Fine China (Gift Article)
Readers fight the decline of fine china by using their “good dishes” for everything from pizza to takeout.
www.nytimes.com
January 27, 2025 at 10:58 PM
"Handel had a reason for making use of whatever was at hand: He was on deadline." wapo.st/4fpx7HS
Opinion | Unsettled by the future? This is the moment for the ‘Messiah.’
Handel’s beloved oratorio was born out of turmoil. It’s fitting for today.
wapo.st
November 5, 2024 at 7:44 PM
Reposted by John Carter
Great to have a guest on the show this week who hangs over here in the sunlight…

@iamstevenhale.bsky.social explains what it’s like to witness an execution and the remarkable community he discovered in his new book (you should buy!)

“Death Row Welcomes You”

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/p...
March 5, 2024 at 5:42 PM
@joshuagrubbsphd.bsky.social so given your fluency in all things Tolkien, I'd run a hypothesis by you:

LOTR is the 20th c. Pilgrim's Progress
March 2, 2024 at 4:29 PM
Absolutely one of all-time favorite writers, who recently died after what seems to have been a wonderful life latimes.com/entertainmen... “‘The Bloodied Nightgown’ is a monument to Joan Acocella's savage wit and unsentimental generosity”
'The Bloodied Nightgown' is a monument to Joan Acocella's savage wit and unsentimental generosity
An eclectic collection of essays on subjects including Dracula, dirty words and Elena Ferrante is a tribute to its writer, who died last month at age 78.
latimes.com
March 2, 2024 at 4:26 PM
“I never saw it coming,” Moore said. “It took me months to walk through my own house in the dark.” www.courier-journal.com/story/news/l...
Stresses of farm life taking toll on farmers' mental health. What's being done to help?
U.S. farmers are more than twice as likely to die by suicide than the general population, according to data compiled by the University of Kentucky.
www.courier-journal.com
February 27, 2024 at 2:33 PM
"based on cell phone usage data, Louisville’s downtown has had the second worst recovery from the pandemic of all the major cities in the United States. Only St. Louis has been worse" www.courier-journal.com/story/opinio...
www.courier-journal.com
February 8, 2024 at 1:28 AM
"Having the phone away from me has almost made my brain more open to information." www.nytimes.com/2024/02/01/t...
A Practical Guide to Quitting Your Smartphone
Readers who have taken the plunge said it had improved their lives, marriages and mental health, and offered advice to those going without their smartphones for “Flip Phone February.”
www.nytimes.com
February 5, 2024 at 1:47 AM
"Everyone says trees are good for us. This scientist wants to prove it. Nearly 8,000 trees and shrubs in southern Louisville and health data from about 500 residents fill out the urban science experiment." wapo.st/4bbbzNP
Everyone says trees are good for us. This scientist wants to prove it.
An ongoing science experiment involves nearly 8,000 trees and shrubs in southern Louisville and health data from nearly 500 residents.
wapo.st
January 30, 2024 at 3:31 PM
Reposted by John Carter
1. A lot of helpful framing in this (depressing) thread on the winnowing the news industry, but I also wonder how it alters the mechanisms of politics.

E.g., I noted last week how movies Selma and Gandhi both feature scenes of a NYTimes journalist reporting on a horrific beating of protesters…
4/ The internet is rewiring not only the media sector (as with streaming) but the public itself, which is breaking up, or being broken, into multiple — some say parallel — realities.

As you can tell from my halting attempt to describe it, we do not have a good language for this shift.
January 28, 2024 at 4:36 PM
Very pleased to share my essay “Lot's Daughters and Naomi and Ruth: Of 'Moral Love' and National Myths” in the Journal of Religious Ethics, now available (open access): onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10..... Applies the work of @abizadeh.bsky.social and Spivak to 1619 Project. Tries to anyway ;)
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jore.12452
Wiley Online Library requires cookies for authentication and use of other site features; therefore, cookies must be enabled to browse the site. Detailed information on how Wiley uses cookies can be fo...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
January 25, 2024 at 12:31 PM
Reposted by John Carter
Not 100% sure on this, but this may be the first image of the #Magi labeled with their traditional names: Balthasar, Melchior, Caspar.

S. Apollinare Nuovo, #Ravenna, early 6th century. Restored after damage in the 19th century.

📷🇮🇹 flic.kr/p/BQtbgx
The Magi (Ravenna, Italy)
The church of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna was built as the palace chapel of the Ostrogoth king Theoderic (454-526). Theoderic was an Arian Christian. Eastern Arianism held that as Son of God, Jes...
flic.kr
January 6, 2024 at 6:55 PM
Reposted by John Carter
i wrote about exactly this last year. one of the long term consequences of trump’s entire scheme is that a once pro forma occasion has become another field of political contestation. or put another way, the norms that governed this process no longer hold
January 7, 2024 at 4:53 PM