hootguy

Churches vary greatly, but one of the largest associations of evangelical congregations in Austin was birthed from young adults, grew from young adults, and plants from young adults.

Our congregation (not part of that network) is one of the rare places where I interact deeply across generations, economic classes, and social classes from professor to auto mechanic. I couldn’t reliably predict someone’s politics. No congregation is perfect, but a common mission crosses a lot of divides.

Reference, please?

v6?

Thinking about Maslow’s hierarchy, the auditorium scene sounded like an effort to impart a religious experience. But “change the world,” at your current employer or your startup, does not qualify on its own as Meaning. It is just ambition’s projection of power. One can imagine all sorts of powerful, malevolent, Meaningless ways to change the world.

To elaborate on the management, not engineering, failure: nice domestic marquee credentials for the most-visible leader, but... How much credence was his input given among other leaders? How high-quality were his lieutenants and the teams they led? This is the kind of issue that only gets flagged from the deep work of your team.

It was kind of funny that one of the results was reported as "a trend to increase hedonic attitudes towards some inulin-rich vegetables." Let's look at just a representative handful of the way said vegetables were cooked and presented: mashed Jerusalem artichoke, spinach, pumpkin cream, stuffed artichoke bottoms, tomato coulis, gratin dauphinois, green beans, shallot sauce. I would develop a "hedonic attitude" toward those if I had all the time in the world to cook like that.

At Data Day Texas 2019, Jonathan Mugan of Deep Grammar presented an overview of the history of NLP's steps toward AI.

At EFF-Austin, Fay Archip and A. J. Butt provided a great introduction to the concept of doxxing and the steps you could take to minimize your risk. This is a write-up of their presentation and a personal reflection on living in an age where mass shaming is re-emerging.

Reading something from a specific, embodied religious tradition (Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu) provides a refreshing set of justifications and perspective to the secular mindset that we exist within that we rarely consider it from the outside. Like a fish discovering oxygen in air. Interesting article.

How about taking the competing arguments at face value and evaluating them against each other? If qui bono is the only question you ask, you shut down a lot of your brain.