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Mid-faith Crisis 354: Who do you say you are?
Joe is back from Mexico and Nick has recovered from man flu. So we talk about who we really are as individuals, and how that affects our relationship with others. Also, we think about what we really need to prepare for Christmas, and the difference between entertaining people and hospitality.
After Coke’s bizarre advert, another cash-strapped company decides to save money by using generative AI. This, though, has a double whammy: the message – avoid Christmas and hide in MacDonalds until January – is as crass as the AI.
“Thanks to the rise in popularity of generative AI, mainstream companies like Coca-Cola and Google are jumping on the bandwagon to plop out new advertisements. There’s just one issue: pretty much everybody hates it.”
If you care about typography – especially on the web – this is a brilliant resource.
Required Christmas listening.
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Mid-faith Crisis 353: The birds and the bees with Ros Gleadow
Joe talks to Professor Ros Gleadow, Emerita Professor in the School of Biological Sciences at Monash University, Australia. They discuss the scale and impact of the climate crisis and, crucially, what we can do to make a difference.
A while back, I went to a fascinating talk on The Theatre – the original Elizabethan theatre where Shakespeare learned his trade when he first came to London. It was given by the author Daniel Swift, drawing on his book, The Dream Factory: London’s First Playhouse and the Making of William Shakespeare. Having just finished the book, what struck me was the idea of Shakespeare as an apprentice, as someone who learned his trade.
A brilliant, disturbing and important essay. “The real tragedy isn’t that students use ChatGPT to do their course work. It’s that universities are teaching everyone—students, faculty, administrators—to stop thinking.” https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/ai-is-destroying-the-university-and-learning-itself
Every now and then I am reminded how wonderful the web can be. Amidst the constant enshittification, in the face of all the AI slop and the death by clickbait, you can still find gems like Jazz Collector. A terrific podcast from a community radio station. Great music, and a knowledgeable and passionate host. And a really good website.
HT to Kagi smallweb for the discovery.
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Mid-faith Crisis 352: Repairing the world with Dave Tomlinson
We have an interview with Dave Tomlinson. Dave and Joe discuss some of the difficult questions people have about God and faith and talk about how we, as Christians, can be part of the repair of the world.
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Mid-faith Crisis 351: Fact-checking Christmas
Jesus gives us a crucial challenge: ‘Who do you say that I am?’ We discuss our answers to that question. Meanwhile, Joe launches MFC verify to examine some claims about Christmas and Nick talks about Bible translation and why there are unicorns in the King James Version.