I resent the fact that Apple can place banner ads for their services directly on your iDevice. Just had one pop up imploring me to come back to Apple Music.
Someone at church is into their Light Phone (and not big tech).
Here’s who is advertising on X now: dating sites for the unvaccinated. “Find your unjected date now.”
I’m not making this up.
The season before Christmas is different for me this year, with fasting instead of feasting, and worship services instead of holiday parties. Still, I have one tradition that I haven’t broken with and that’s listening to some Christmas music. I’m pretty specific about what I like, though. Here are three of my absolute favorites that have to make an appearance this time of year.
Pome is coming to an end, due to the demise of TinyLetter. I’ll be sorry to see it go and with it a vibrant collection of poetry in my feed reader.
I would love to get my cable from Amazon in two days intead of six, but I honestly feel like it’s a sin to ask someone to work to deliver my stuff on Sunday. Bumped out.
Two of my earliest CD purchases.
Frankly, the iA Writer 7 update makes me want to try collaborating with AI for my writing because it can be done ethically and responsibly.
In the book of Acts, St. Paul travels to Athens. He carries the gospel to an area teeming with idols. He addresses the following to the people in the Areopagus:
For while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription, ‘TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.’ Therefore what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you.
St. Paul goes on to explain the Christian God and how in Him “we live and move and have our being.”
Anglican Archdeacon Andrew Brashier imagines Paul in a similar situation in his own suburban environment, amongst the Christmas decorations, but not seeing the spirit of Christ.
Then Paul stood in the midst of the lights and decorations in the city and said, “People of Suburbia, I perceive that in all things you are also religious. For as I passed by and beheld your lights and decorations, I found a blow-up with this inscription: ‘Happy Holidays’. What you therefore celebrate in ignorance, Him I declare unto you.”
This reminds me of the stories about the missionaries from other countries coming to spread the gospel in the U.S.
Via @marmanold
From 2015, this piece by Steven Hyden on the advantages of compact discs still rings true.
I collect vinyl, too, and I’ve held on to some old cassettes. And of course I have two hard drives full of MP3s and a paid subscription to a music streaming service. But at heart I’m a CD collector. I still own CDs I purchased when I was 14. I haven’t retained anything else from when I was 14, except for my teeth. It’s possible my copy of the Singles soundtrack will outlive my molars.
These are consonant with the thoughts I had when I pulled out my copy of Wish by The Cure from 1992, and it sounded better than ever.