Just heard my favorite self introduction:

“Remember the young scientist who ran into the room interrupting the 1994 NASA press conference about the comet colliding with Jupiter? That was me.” ~Heidi Hammel, approx.

A Joint Letter from 154 Bishops of The Episcopal Church - Whose Dignity Matters? From a month ago, but watching still gave me chills and hope and maybe courage.

Between this, the impossible numbers in the original laboratory study of cognitive dissonance, and a recent failure to replicate a basic dissonance effect, things aren’t looking great for [cognitive dissonance].¹ But that only makes me believe in it harder!

~Adam Mastroanni

Concept by Terry Godier @tg that I didn’t know I needed. HTT @manton

Link

Love for…

Part of a non-Tolkien thread on micro.blog; this post reminded me of the TeaWithTolkien community.

@calebgreene @teawithtolkien.bsky.social

❝   That Western civilisation as we know it owes a very great deal to those, Augustine not least, who generated a vision of work, prayer and belief that overcame the decay and collapse of the Roman Empire.
Paul Monk, [Why the fall of Rome and a Nobel winner offer hope in a world in crisis](https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/why-the-fall-of-rome-and-a-nobel-winner-offer-hope-in-a-world-in-crisis/news-story/ae269a299057355536ef4764a7361be9), The Australian, 3 Jan 2026 Screenshot of several paragraphs on Augustine from Paul Monk's essay.

Andrew Sullivan today.

Paul Monk, writing about hope and peril for Venezuela in The Australian quotes Ellsberg:

There are situations, Ellsberg observed, …“in which the US government, starting ignorant, did not, would not learn. There was a whole set of what amounted to institutional ‘anti-learning’ mechanisms working to preserve and guarantee unadaptive and unsuccessful behaviour: the fast turnover in personnel; the lack of institutional memory at any level; the failure to study history; to analyse or even record operational experience or mistakes; the effective pressures for optimistically false reporting at every level, for describing ‘progress’ rather than problems or failures, thus concealing the need for change in approach or learning.”

❝   The problem with all of us being so much more a hive mind than we realize is that knowledge problems that ripple across our a information ecosystems can become not just threats to individuals with weak character or bad habits, but the equivalent of colony collapse.†

~Erin Kissane [Landslide: a ghost story](https://www.wrecka.ge/landslide-a-ghost-story/)