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Looking for the Fig Tree
Whose Children Are They?
society

Whose Children Are They?

The other day I was watching comedian, Hasan Minhaj, interview the former governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie. My ears immediately perked up during this specific part of the interview: It's a short clip - under two minutes long, but there's at least a couple things to unpack here. A policy question. And a moral one. * Whose children are they? * Who pays for caring for other people's kids? Setting aside the policy question. Given the relentlessly scripture and Jesus commands us to care fo

2 min read
How I'm Using, Loving, and Hating AI Today
tech

How I'm Using, Loving, and Hating AI Today

For whatever reason, over the last six to nine months, an increasing number of people have been asking me my opinions about AI. What it is. What I use it for. If it's as crazy as they have heard it is. These questions have come from friends, parents of kids from school, coworkers, and folks from church. So, over the course of this post, I'll do my best to summarize a lot of those answers and thoughts. However, we have to start with one mega caveat: ⚠️Warning: The pace of advancement of AI—and

6 min read
The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (It's fine)
movie review

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (It's fine)

It is. It really is. Your kids will enjoy it. My youngest son, Asher, laughed gleefully out loud several times in the theater. And, at a few key points, even I couldn't help but grin, turn, and look my kids to see their reactions to what was happening on screen. That was fun. And I guess a lot of other people agreed; the movie made almost $850 million dollars in thirty (30) days. But it's not a good movie. Really it's barely a movie. The visuals are great, the familiar beeps and boops of

5 min read
Ask Yourself This ONE Thing Before Tokenmaxxing
society

Ask Yourself This ONE Thing Before Tokenmaxxing

"Why am I doing this?" Dare Obasanjo (@carnage4life) on ThreadsThe struggle to get to the top of the AI usage leaderboard at a tokenmaxxing company.Threads One of the reasons that I think I still have a job in tech is that, despite not having a college degree, I've always had a love and fascination for technology. I remember being eight or nine years old at my grandmother's house tinkering with her electronics. That tinkering continued into the era of personal computers where I futzed and fuss

5 min read