I am so pleased to announce another of my “secret projects” that I’ve been dying to share with you all.

A number of years ago, I received an early copy of a middle grade fantasy that was full of adventure, a sense of humor, and a deep spiritual sense of the world. It was called ON THE EDGE OF THE DARK SEA OF DARKNESS and was written by musician (and apparently author!) Andrew Peterson.

It was exactly the kind of book I love, and I was thrilled to discover it was going to be a series.

Recently, my dear friend Sarah Rubio reached out to ask if I’d have any interest in adapting that same book into a graphic novel. I think I said yes before she finished asking. (Sarah is one of my favorite people to hang out with, talk to, and work with.)

And now it’s officially announced:

The Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness, the graphic novel, is coming out this fall, with beautiful art by the incredibly talented Alessia Trunfio.

This is the first graphic novel in the Wingfeather Saga, and I can’t wait to share it with you all.

In the introduction, Andrew says, “I confess, there are a few new scenes here—ones that wouldn’t have worked in the books or the animated series—that brought tears to my eyes. I offer my deep thanks to Matt Mikalatos for the adaptation and Alessia Trunfio for the beautiful artwork, both of which will usher a host of readers, both old and new, into a grand adventure.”

Learn more and read a big chunk of the beginning of the book at the publisher’s website!

I’m in Malaysia right now

— filming a movie, and if all goes according to plan I should be able to share a casting announcement next week!

There are many, many amazing things about Malaysia (I SAW A MONITOR LIZARD THIS WEEK) and a lot of things I can’t talk about because I spend a LOT of my day at the film set, but one thing I can say is that I am within a ten minute walk of really authentic Lanzhou style hand-pulled noodles and it makes me very, very happy.

BRUCE

I may not be at home but I am still getting occasional updated pics of everyone’s favorite bunny.

Here’s hoping your day is full of flowers overhead and cool dirt beneath your feet!

Peace to you,

Matt

Because every single June my social media fills up with two things: supporters of the LGBTQ community celebrating “Pride Month” and various religious folks who do not support the LGBTQ community saying something along the lines of “God hates Pride” (insert Bible verse with rainbow behind it).

That weird little theological trick is what we call an equivocation fallacy.

An equivocation fallacy is when someone uses the same word in two different senses within the same argument without acknowledging the different definitions.

So, a silly example would be something like this:

Premise 1. Bats are flying mammals.
Premise 2. Baseball involves hitting a ball with a bat.
Conclusion: Baseball players smack baseballs with flying mammals.

Obviously, we’ve got two definitions of “bat” here, and the argument is nonsensical. If we used it to try to get people riled up about how baseball is animal cruelty1, no doubt someone would say, um, have ya watched any baseball before? Are you sure you know what a bat is?

A very similar little something is going on in this vaguely Christian-shaped “pride” argument.

What’s being argued is something like this:

Premise 1. God hates pride (insert Bible verse).
Premise 2. LGBTQ people, on the other hand, celebrate pride and associate themselves with it.
Conclusion(s): God hates the LGBTQ community/God has a different set of values than the LGBTQ community/Jesus wouldn’t say “happy Pride” (or any number of other things depending on the argument/meme).

But, of course, the English word pride has many different definitions and a surprisingly broad semantic range.

Merriam Webster includes, for instance definitions like “reasonable self esteem” and “respect and appreciation for oneself and others as members of a group and especially a marginalized group” as well as “exaggerated self esteem” or “conceit.”

And of course, everyone’s favorite, “a gathering of lions.”

I think we can all agree that God is not opposed to “reasonable self esteem.”

So, when scripture talks about “pride” what definition is closest?

Well, clearly scripture often refers to one of the more negative definitions. The word we sometimes translate pride in Hebrew is גַּאֲוָה (ga’avah), which means something along the lines of “arrogance.” Greek uses ὑπερηφανία (hyperēphania) which can mean things like boastful, arrogant, or an inflated sense of self-importance.

Which of course, is not what anyone means when they say “Gay Pride,” which is more along the lines of some of the other definitions.

So the conversation is going something like this:

Gay Pride person: “I respect who I am and appreciate the other members of the marginalized LGBTQ community and I’m glad to be part of it.”

Anti-LGBTQ Christian person: “God hates arrogance.”

It doesn’t make any sense because we’re throwing around the same word but it means different things.

In other words, this is what happens every time some lions get together:

People making this “God hates Pride” argument are twisting scripture, and in a way that, unfortunately, actually draws us away from the point scripture is often making: pride (ARROGANCE) comes before a fall.

So while various social media theologians are lining up to condemn people saying, “Hey, I’m pleased with who I am and who is in my community” they’re simultaneously missing that many pulpits are full of arrogant pastors who have an over-inflated sense of themselves and their own importance. You know, PRIDE. The kind that God so often speaks against.

Thank God for the humble ministers out there!

ANYWAY, equivocation is not a fallacy unique to this conversation, but it’s an egregious example I see every June, and every time it makes me think of those poor lonely lions who have been told that God doesn’t want them to be in community, and all because the word “pride” can mean so many different things in English.

Roman dichroic glass and the Lycurgus Cup

My daughter was writing a research paper about how different forms of painting are dying out in the contemporary world. Not only are certain techniques becoming less commonly used, they’re also used by fewer and fewer people, and theoretically — according to her paper — they could be “lost to time.”

I thought, huh, that’s interesting, I wonder if there are examples of this having happened in our past and it turns out that absolutely there are many examples of human beings creating an art form and then losing the knowledge of how to do it.

A weird and wonderful example being Roman dichroic glass.

“Dichroic” means “two colored” but the fascinating thing about this ancient Roman cup pictured above is that the glass is green if is reflected off of it, but red when light passes through it. Yeah, those pictures above are all of the same cup at different angles of light.

You can watch it happen for yourself at the video below:

Scholars today still argue about how exactly Roman glass workers made this. We know theoretically how it’s done, and some modern glassmakers have managed to make something similar. But the fact is, we don’t know exactly how this was done. That human knowledge was lost to us when the last master failed to find an apprentice to teach.

Pretty interesting!

Bruce is also a different color when light passes through him

He’s watching you!

Here’s to a week filled with peace, joy, and a deep contentment in the communities to which you belong!

Until next time,

Matt

Five years ago I got my first paid screenwriting work creating a biopic about Hudson Taylor, his wife Maria, and a Chinese pastor named Wang Lai Jun. That movie is about to go into production this summer, and I’ll be directing! We’re filming in Malaysia, so I’ll be overseas for a while working on the film. We’re doing casting right now, which is so much fun (I’ll announce actors when I’m able! Probably next month some time.)

In the meantime you can watch the interview below with me and Billy Hallowell:

You can sign up for updates about the movie here.

My Favorite Comic This Week

I read just the first two bits of dialogue without reading the caption for a long time, and I was trying to figure out what was funny before I got to the punchline, so this comic was particularly effective on me. Sadly, I wasn’t able to track down the artist on this one!

New JIMMY trailer!

You may recall from previous newsletters that I’m good friends with the director of this movie, JIMMY, a film about Jimmy Stewart’s World War 2 experiences and how a certain Christmas movie he starred in helped him move past the trauma of war.

And of course, the director (Aaron Burns) and I have a book coming out this fall!

Preorder from the publisher

Some sad news

I’m sorry to say that my little squirrel pal, Roger, has passed away.

I trained Roger to come when I called and to eat out of my hand. A couple of weeks ago I found him curled up in our front yard. I’m not sure what happened, if he was hit by a car or came across some poison in the neighborhood, but he was definitely gone.

I loved that little guy and I’m so sad to see him go!

Bruce is hale and hearty and loving the onset of spring

Meanwhile, our boy Bruce turns seven years old in just two months. He’s always happy to see another Spring, and he’s been doing a lot of happy hops in the yard. He’s trained to come to bed at night when I call, but lately he’d much rather stay up late, play “chase” (this is when I have to go get him for bed, he loves this), and eat the copious amounts of food available to him.

He’s also found this nook between two logs in the backyard that he likes to snuggle under.

Another favorite little den he’s built is on the side of the yard under the protection of some very large bushes on the other side of our fence.

He’s always alert, and always ready to give chase to any cats or other large beasties who think they might be able to enter his territory. Small animals are allowed so long as they show proper respect.

May your week be full of abundant food, sunshine, and good feelings. Peace to you!

— Matt

If you’re in the Portland area this weekend

I’m preaching at Access Church this Sunday at 10am. I happen to know it’s also Cupcake Sunday, which is not a trick: cupcakes are available after the service! Come hang out with us!

My favorite comic this week

“Do not cry, Mother.” 😭

From the always delightful Tom Gauld. Hold your babies tight, Mamas.

My favorite sign around town this week

I’m relieved to discover that fascism is prohibited here in the state of Washington! This was on a cement traffic barrier near my house.

A year of God With Us!

It’s hard to believe that my first graphic novel, God With Us, has been out for an entire year now. I’m so thankful for this project, and I’m thrilled that people are still finding it, reading it, and passing it on to kids in their lives. I did see a social media post this week that suggested maybe Adam and Eve weren’t wearing much, and I just want to say, yes, that’s true… JUST LIKE IN THE BIBLE! ;) (You can see Eve above in the lower left… like in most illustrated Bible stories, Adam and Eve have never seen a leaf or strategically placed tree without immediately putting themselves behind it.)

Bruce and Roger

Meanwhile, in our own backyard:

Here’s Roger getting a rare treat: a macadamia nut! One of the best signs that Spring is here is that Roger doesn’t run and hide the food I give him any more, he grabs it, sits nearby and eats it while glaring at me.

Bruce has been eating all the bark off the remnants of our maple tree. He can’t reach much from the ground anymore, but I was still surprised to see him standing on top of the trunk.

Overall, Bruce loves the weather right now: cool enough to be wearing a fur suit, warm enough not to need shelter. He’s been doing his “victory jumps” through the yard at various moments in the day.

Here’s hoping your days are full of comfortable weather, unexpected snacks, and many victory jumps!

Peace to you,

Matt

Here’s me talking about Saint Patrick on the Man to Men podcast.

Now on to TESCREAL!

Hello hello and howdy to you.

Every once in a while I like to fill you all in on the weird things I’ve come across in my week, and this week I learned a new and bizzare term which describes a new and bizarre set of philosophical systems. The term is “TESCREAL.”

This is going to take me a minute to unpack, so before I explain it, let me give you a super simplified idea of where we’re going to end up after the explanation.

Basically, “TESCREAL” is a term coined by computer scientist Timnit Gebru and philosopher Émile P. Torres. We’ll get to the exact meaning in a moment, but the term is designed to describe something simple: a movement of billionaires and technologists who push personal scientific projects without regard for the human costs, claiming that there is an “existential” need to advance the technology despite the “short term” fatal risks to human beings.

An example could be Elon Musk’s push to get humans on Mars. He’s willing to cut corners on safety because the “human race won’t survive” the ecological collapse of Earth if we don’t colonize Mars (this is, of course, a ridiculous position to take, because if we could actually terraform a completely hostile environment like Mars, why would we not just repair the ecological collapse on Earth instead?).

TESCREAL is an acronym that lists a variety of philosophical systems that overlap with one another AND have a common philosophical ancestor: 20th century eugenics.

TESCREALists tend to create religious terminology for the advancement (or failure to advance) certain technologies. They’ll create a utopia or avoid an apocalypse. So it’s okay that they are dumping rocket fuel into an endangered marsh or guzzling down all the water in a small town to run their AI.

AI, in fact, is an interesting topic for TESCREALists, some of whom think it will be human salvation, others of whom think it will be the end of humanity but MOST of whom (even the doomers) think that we must push forward with AI as fast and hard as we can despite whatever cost may come with it.

So, that’s the basic overview of who the TESCREALists are, but for those who are interested, let me lay out the acronym itself:

T - Transhumanism. This is a philosophy pushing for the betterment of humanity through technology and (depending on the branch) the possibility of becoming something more-than or other-than human through tech. Transcending human biology through technology. “We can live forever.”

E - Extropianism. Very similar idea: extropianism thinks that technology will lead us to better and better human lives and eventual immortality. (Think the opposite of entropy… extropy). You can see that this gets religious very quickly.

S - Singularitarianism. Belief in and/or support of a technological “singularity”… a super-intelligence that will rapidly exceed human intelligence, and be beyond human control or possibly conceptions. Does this get into the “god” territory? Yup! It could.

C - Cosmism (modern version). The basic idea here (morphing out of the original, Russian philosophy of cosmism) is that humans can become post-human/immortal/superhuman through the human race pushing hard into space exploration today.

R - Rationalist (the community/philosophy). More or less “overcome bias through rationality.” But also it’s a specific community that has grown up around a handful of websites and blogs. It’s heavily focused on transhumanist thought and effective altruism (see below).

EA - Effective altruism. Effective altruism is about impartially calculating what actions (or donations, etc.) actually do the greatest good for the most people. So this doesn’t sound so bad, right, and in theory most of us do some amount of this, and this is a philosophy that is compatible with many others (including Christian thought). If you want to see what this movement looks like at the extremes though, check out the link above, which discusses a conversation where an effective altruist is given a choice: save a child from a burning building or save a Picasso which can be sold and all the proceeds given to help people. If we’re being impartial and “doing the most good for the most people” we would let the child burn (according to at least some in the conversation).

L - longtermism. The idea that influencing the longterm future of humanity should be a key moral determiner in the contemporary world.

Some of these ideas have value or things of interest in them. Some of them are secular religious constructs (no shade, let the secularists have religion, I say). What I find VERY interesting about this construct overall is that it illuminates truly batty things that I see tech-barons and billionaires saying about the world. For instance, if you’ve heard about wealthy tech-dude Bryan Johnson getting blood transfusions from his 15-year-old son to see if it will help him stay younger, that’s an outworking of some of these philosophical ideas above. When you hear people talking about “creating God” or “paradise engineering” those are things that TESCREALists love to throw around.

The real problem is that the underpinning network of these philosophies is white supremacist, male supremacist, tech supremacist, and wealth supremacist, and it’s being pushed hard in places like Washington D.C. and Silicon Valley. You’ll notice pretty quickly that some of the conversations get extremely wealth-centered and, uh, racist… things like, “Oh we HAVE to carve up Africa and take all their rare earth metals because the people there don’t have what it takes to create the scientific advances that WE will with all of that. This is about (insert the thing… making rich people live forever, creating a god, advancing AI), not the short-term devastation of the environment or the people we are harming.”

Anyway, you know I like to share these things when I learn about them and I thought it might interest you!

If you like both Monty Python’s Search for the Holy Grail and OG Star Trek, this video is for you

If you need even more laughs this week, you’ll be surprised to know that this exploration of a Hopper painting is quite funny.

Looking for a good book to read?

I highly recommend this one.

I thought everyone knew who Brandi Carlile is, so I was a little surprised as I was reading her memoir to find that she’s much less well known than I thought.

But, it’s a great book about a woman who is an incredible musician and artist, a woman of faith, and a person who creates family with the people around her. I loved it a lot.

Here’s the gas prices in my neighborhood yesterday

Yiiiiiiiikes!

BRUCE

He cares not what heights the gas prices rise to. He doesn’t worry about TESCREALists or billionaires. On the contrary, he spends his days watching the grass of the back yard grow so he can eat another meal. He enters the house and behold, the rabbit pellets have been refilled upon his plate. He doesn’t worry about the hawks or the raccoons unless they happen to be right here, in his yard. He’s pretty chill, in other words.

He flops at my wife’s feet to get pets.

He chews on a log for fun.

He sleeps where he pleases.

He dines beneath the flowering plum tree.

May your days be as fine and worry-free as Bruce’s!

Peace to you this week,

Matt

I am thrilled to tell you that this November I have a book coming out about the life and philosophy of Jimmy Stewart, the star of It’s a Wonderful Life, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, The Philadelphia Story, Hitchcock’s Vertigo, and many others.

Jimmy’s daughter, Kelly, read the book and said, “This is the memoir Dad should have written but didn’t” and also “Dad would have loved this book.” Kelly very kindly agreed to write the foreword to the book as well.

Although he was one of the most famous and highest paid actors of his day, Jimmy didn’t look to Hollywood or his vocation for meaning in his life. This book talks about how he returned from World War II and discovered how to build a life with real meaning beyond the silver screen. It’s an inspiring book with some great insights from a nearly universally beloved human who had a lot of deep thoughts about how to live a good life.

The book is also coming out the same week will by my friend Aaron Burns’s movie, JIMMY. So this will be a good year for Jimmy Stewart fans!

The book, of course, will be available at all your favorite local bookstores as well as the usual suspects in the corporate book-selling world.

I very much hope you’ll enjoy it!

The latest on SILO!

I’ve talked about the TV show SILO a few times here since my good friend Hugh wrote the novel it’s based on.

Hugh just got to visit set for the last day of shooting. That link will take you to a fun walk through the journey, from uploading a self-published story called WOOL to hanging out with some of the biggest names in Hollywood.

War. What is it good for?

Like most folks these days, I’ve been thinking a lot about war the last few weeks.

Wilfred Owen was a young man and a poet during World War 1. Much of his poetry was written from a war hospital during 1917, where he was recovering from war wounds and shellshock.

Below, please find one of his most famous poems, about some soldiers making their way through a battlefield only to be accosted by poisonous gas.

Allow me to translate the Latin for you, also. The phrase Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori means, “It is sweet and proper to die for one’s country.”

Dulce et Decorum Est

by Wilfred Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Owens was killed in battle on November 4th, 1918. He was 25 years old. Seven days later, the war ended.

My favorite online comic this week

BRUCE!

Astronomical Spring may still be a week away, but Meteorological Spring has been in full swing for a couple weeks here in the Northern Hemisphere and Bruce and the rest of Nature seem to be enjoying it quite a bit.

Whatever the weather where you are I hope you are loving it, and that you can survey your domain, enjoy the flowers, and find new tasty treats growing all around you. :)

Peace to you this week!

— Matt

Girl Scout Cookies have arrived! If you’d like to order online from my daughter Myca, you can do it at this link. Thanks! You can also enter pretty much any grocery store in America and find young women pushing their baked goods.

I just sold a short story to Asimov’s Science Fiction

I grew up reading Asimov’s Science Fiction. My dad had copies going back to pretty much the beginning of the magazine, so it wasn’t just new issues, but old ones going back for years. So getting a story in this magazine feels like a really special moment.

My friend, Nebula award winning author Will McIntosh, and I wrote the story together. It’s called CICADA, and it’s about an alien invasion where the waves of attackers are predictable to the millisecond… but we’re never sure where they’ll attack or what form they’ll take.

In a complete reversal, while I know all about the story and where it will be published, we’re not 100% sure when the story will be appearing in the magazine. But I’ll be sure to update you when we do know!

Saint Patrick’s Day is coming

I’m sure you’ve already got your Patrick’s Day tree up in your house and you’ve started buying gifts and ironing your green clothing.

You may also enjoy PRAYING WITH SAINT PATRICK, a book written by yours truly and my good friend Aaron Burns.

You can hear more about the book AND our friend Patrick at the podcast below!

If you’ve got a podcast or other outlet and want an interview about Patrick, give me a shout and either Aaron or I would be thrilled to join you!

The 2026 BIRD OF THE YEAR

Is this bird! His name is Justin.

Just kidding, it’s all the horned larks, not only Justin. They don’t give “bird of the year” to a single bird, that would just be unfair to everyone.

Horned larks are the only larks native to North America. You can guess by looking at the photo how they got their name.

Horned larks also build their nests on the ground. They even make a “porch” with stones on side of the nest, though they don’t use it like a porch and no one is 100% sure what the purpose is of putting those rocks nearby.

If you live in the lower 48 of the US, then horned larks live somewhere near you. Keep an eye out, and if you see one be sure to shout CONGRATULATIONS FOR ACHIEVING BIRD OF THE YEAR!

GOD WITH US for just $9

Right now, Christianbook has God With Us on sale for NINE DOLLARS. A great opportunity to buy copies for friends (or yourself!).

Also, we’re looking for more reviews on Amazon and Goodreads, so if you’ve read the book we’d love a review!

BRUCE IS SNEAKING UP ON ME

What’s this?

It’s coming closer.

Whoa! Hey! That’s very close!

Whew, I feel a little uncomfortable here, Bruce, I think I’ll look out the window and —

NOT YOU TOO, ROGER?!

I hope you have a wonderful week full of animal sneak attacks (vegetarian animals, hopefully, unless you’re a radish, in which case best of luck).

Peace to you,

Matt

Meanwhile, my first screenplay I got paid to write is meant to enter production later this year, which has meant a lot of meetings and discussions with the production team, as well as a jaunt to Malaysia to check out a studio there as a potential place to shoot the movie.

It was my first time in Malaysia and it was INCREDIBLE. Malaysia is a multi-cultural and multi-ethnic country. Malay is the official language, but everyone I met spoke some English or Chinese as well (most of them spoke both, in addition to other Asian languages).

Here are some pics from my trip!

Maybe the most important pic is this one, where I was reunited with authentic hand-pulled noodles from China:

And here’s the studio backlot, where we’ll hopefully be shooting a lot of our movie!

It was a great time, and so much fun to be back in Asia after a long absence.

I only learned a little bit of Malay in my short time there, but my favorite phrase was “Malaysia boleh!” which means, basically, “Malaysia, we can do it!” It started as a government commercial meant to build national pride, but the Malay people mostly thought it was silly, so now it’s used in a lot of funny ways. For instance, when we saw a van on the road driving in the middle lane with their hazards on, someone asked the driver, “Why isn’t that guy in the slow lane” and he replied, “Malaysia boleh.” So now it can mean things like, “We do what we want” or “that guy’s not the smartest but hey, it’s Malaysia, we can do what we want.” It’s a great example of a saying in another language that I wish we had in English.

GOD WITH US

If you haven’t yet read GOD WITH US, it’s my first graphic novel and I am so pleased with how it turned out. It’s a beautifully illustrated story of the Emmaus Road… Jesus walks along with some of his followers who don’t recognize him. They tell him stories about himself, and he tells them stories from the scriptures (and, in the case below, he does tell one from his recent experience as well)

If you HAVE read the book, would you consider posting a review to Amazon? It’s a huge help to me and gets more eyes on the book.

And as always you can order books from local shops as well, including Hearts and Minds, White Oak Books, or Nooks bookstore.

This your ball, kid?

This is a funny little social media post I saw recently and enjoyed. In Japan, comics are read right to left, while obvs in the US we read them left to right. So this heartwarming Japanese comic about a very tall woman became a story of terror when read backwards by people elsewhere.

THE SLAP!

I was reminded of this video recently. “The Slap” was an Australian TV show about a guy who slaps a kid at a party and all of the fallout that comes into his life and community as a result, as everyone reckons with the fact that a grown man has hit a child. THE SLAP 2 is a funny little video that came about in response.

BRUCE!

Bruce likes to stick close to my wife in the evenings when he comes in. Here he is taking a rest under her feet. Yesterday morning when he came inside he was eating, and when he heard her come into the kitchen he started running in circles until she came over to say good morning and give him a head scratch.

And this is Jolly Roger. I’ve trained him to come stand on the table by the back door when he wants a treat. He pretty much always wants a treat. Bruce mostly tolerates him, but every once in a while he chases the poor squirrel up a tree.

I hope your week is filled with people you love to be around or, worst case, someone you can mostly tolerate. ;)

Peace to you,

Matt

I recently got together with Laurie Christine at the Sword and Story podcast to talk about Saint Nick!

You can listen here (WARNING — if you have small kids we talk about family traditions re: “Santa being real” right out of the gate):

If you’re looking for a book for the holiday season, I sure hope you’ll consider Praying with Saint Nicholas!

My favorite thing on the internet lately

Recently Twitter/X rolled out a new security feature that lets you see where an account is based in the world and also if they’ve changed their screen name a lot, all in an attempt to make it clearer when an account is a bot/troll/scammer.

With some hilarious results, including this one, my favorite:

Mostly I see this as a reminder that to sustain the level of hatred and fear that some folks want us to have in this culture, it requires an enormous amount of time, resources, and, yes, dishonesty.

But also it’s pretty funny to see them get unmasked like that.

I guess we should talk about Judge Dredd

Would you believe me if I told you that Judge Dredd is a comic-book satire about the dangers of authoritarianism and empowering law enforcement at the expense of liberty? Because it is! It’s not even subtle!

Would you also believe me if I said that the US government apparently missed the entire point of the character and are now recruiting anti-immigration judges using overtly fascistic and authoritarian symbology using that same character?

Look, is this pure ignorance? An example of trolling the libs? Unironic dumb-dumb “I missed the satire”? Pure fannish devotion to authoritarianism? It’s hard to say.

But here’s a little about Judge Dredd:

Dredd is a *British* comic started in 1977 about a future authoritarian state where “Judges” are empowered to keep the law at any cost: they have the authority to execute people on the street, no questions asked, for any infraction.

This is, of course, classic authoritarian philosophy: human rights get in the way of order; therefore we will become lawless in order to enforce the law. So in the real world, for instance, somewhere like El Salvador uses gang violence as an excuse to completely throw out the rule of law and randomly arrest pretty much anyone they feel like without judicial oversight, meaning an (actual, measurable, impressive) drop in crime along with an (actual, measurable, impressive) increase in innocent people losing their civil rights, being wrongfully arrested, etc.

One of Judge Dredd’s most widely acclaimed comic runs takes a look at what happens when the citizens — led by a radicalized protestor named America — demand Democracy. We learn that Judge Dredd is, uh, not a fan.

America-the-person says we must reject the authoritarian city-state model AND the “Judge” system.

By the story’s end, America loses her life at the foot of the Statue of Liberty at the hands of the authoritarian “Judges.” We also see that the Statue of Liberty in this future world is overshadowed by a much larger statue, the Statue of Justice.

This is a comic book. It’s not exactly subtle. It’s a poke-in-the-eye satirical dark comedy about authoritarianism.

The people are actually allowed to vote for whether they want democracy, and they reject it in favor of the safety of a system that is familiar and knowable: the masked and heavily armed, capricious and unpredictable Judges.

So I guess the question is, should we be worried that our Department of Homeland Security is using a satirical authoritarian law enforcement officer as their mascot in recruiting immigration judges?

I mean, regardless of whether it’s done in ignorance, an intention to own the libs, or because they kinda stan Dredd, should this concern us?

I’m gonna say yes.

You know who ISN’T an authoritarian: BRUCE!

Peace to you this week!

Matt

What we don’t spend a lot of time thinking about is *bias* in AI.

In the media? Yes, of course. In books? Sure! In author newsletters written for fun? You betcha.

My favorite place to go to get examples of bias in AI is a little Ai called Grok.

Grok — famously named after a word invented in a science fiction novel, neat — is an AI that is owned and operated by a fella named Elon Musk.

Whatever your opinion about Mr. Musk, we can say one thing for sure: the guy is notoriously thin-skinned despite being the richest man on Earth (he’s got twice the money that Jeff Bezos does).

So Musk does this weird thing. People will show him responses from Grok, and he will look at the response and say, “Hmmm, I don’t like that. We need to make some tweaks.” Then he’ll run off and tinker around in Grok’s brain1. This is usually related to politics. He doesn’t like his AI saying “woke” stuff. To be fair, he also didn’t like it when Grok went completely off the rails and started spouting a bunch of racist and anti-semitic stuff and started calling itself MechaHitler.

It wasn’t really the first time. Grok had denied the Holocaust before. Apparently the whole MechaHitler thing happened because of an “update” to Grok where it was told not to “shy away from making claims which are politically incorrect, as long as they are well substantiated.”

And you have to understand that an LLM doesn’t “think”… it’s a word prediction software. It’s like when you’re texting a message and you say, “I’ll be home —” and your phone starts giving you options: 1. soon 2. for Christmas 3. with the bacon

Your phone isn’t “thinking” or doing anything other than taking a bunch of weighted choices attached to the different words and saying prrrroooobbabbly this guy is about to say “I’ll be home soon.” It has no way to know that you car engine just exploded because you ran over a chicken and were actually about to say “I’ll be home after I get all these feathers out of the air filter.”

Which is only to say, every AI, every Large Language Model, is being constantly tweaked so it doesn’t tell you to eat rocks or juggle knives or peel your eyelids off. Which means humans are shaping and molding and changing what it says and how it says it and EVEN changing what information is available to the AI, what is “true” and what is acceptable to “say” (which again, we’re anthropomorphizing here, AI isn’t learning, it doesn’t know what is true, it doesn’t “say” things).

So, back to Grok.

People like to mess with Grok and get it to say mean things (sometimes true things) about Elon Musk. And Musk — again, a really thin-skinned guy — does NOT like his AI saying mean (even true) things about him. Why would he?

So he’s been messing with the algorithm, trying to “teach” Grok to be more positive about its owner.

So this week as people started messing with Grok, trying to get it to say mean things about Musk, they started getting some really hilarious results (some of which are MUCH MUCH too foul for me to share here).

But this one is really my favorite. Someone asked Grok, who is better, Jesus Christ or Elon Musk. Grok’s reply:

Also… “over-reliance on Earth”?! WHAT?!

Another favorite:

This led to predictable outrage from online Marvel nerds, but my favorite response by far was this one:

All of which to say this:

If you’re using AI, you need to be asking yourself the same questions about bias that you should be asking about media you’re taking in:

* Who or what are the sources being used?
* Who’s paying for this and what agenda(s) might they have?
* What are the unchallenged stereotypes or assumptions?2
* See some more standard media bias questions to ask here.

Also: I’m seeing with my high schooler right now there are people in education saying “We have to let kids use AI because in the future this will be part of the workforce, so we’re educating them on something that will help them in the years to come.”

First of all: Maybe. 95% of companies have seen ZERO return on AI incorporation. Some have been damaged by incorporating AI. For instance, Microsoft just rolled out some new AI agents and included a warning saying, hey, if you turn this on you should just know that sometimes it goes onto the internet and downloads malware and we’re not sure why, so use it at your own risk. If there’s one thing businesses hate it’s *not making money*. So I don’t think we’ve reached the tipping point of “AI is the inevitable future” yet, especially given how expensive it is financially and energy-wise. And, you know, the Hitler thing.

Second of all: Just telling kids, “Sure, use AI for this assignment” is NOT TEACHING. If educators don’t understand how AI works and what it can actually do well or how it can be useful, don’t for a second think you’re going to teach a high schooler anything about it. I have good friends who understand AI and use it wisely to do interesting things, but some educators are overwhelmed and think, eh, I’ll let them use it.3

Anyway, stop over-relying on Earth, that’s all I ask.

Maybe we should just go read some books

Ah, Matt Mikalatos. I remember him well. He was this old man who always was like, “Get those AI off my lawn! Go read a book!”

Here’s an interview with my friend Byron Borger, talking about different books that can help you enter into the upcoming holiday season: ADVENT!

And can you guess what he says is his favorite Advent book of the year?

Hint: jump to the 27 minute mark and you can hear him talk all about it!

Hint #2:

It’s my book! Yay!

Byron is a bookshop owner and he’d be thrilled to drop one in the mail to you. Just click the festive green button below to go to his site:

ORDER HERE

Imaginary Jesus audio for three bucks

In one of those weird publishing things that sometimes happens, Imaginary Jesus is out of print BUT the Imaginary Jesus audio book is still out there in the world. For a limited time the good folks at audiobooks.com are selling IJ for the low price of $3.25.

Here’s a link!

Did I waste my life making comics?

One of my favorite things on the internet this week…

Might be true of some comic guys but MY comic is cool.

BRUCE!

We’ve probably been giving Bruce too many treats on the porch, because he’s taken to standing at the entrance to the door, looking at us dolefully. Like, uh, guys, is there a treat or what?

GUYS IS THERE A TREAT OR NOT?

I hope this week is a great one for you, full of your favorite treats.

Peace to you!

- Matt

Crows Aren’t Black

Or at least, they’re not black to other crows.

Birds can — like humans — see blue, green, and red. What we call “primary colors.” And as you know, the thousands of colors we can see are caused by combinations of those three colors.

But most birds can also see something human beings can’t: ultraviolet light.

What does it look like?

Well, we don’t really know because humans can’t see it. But it does mean that birds see this whole extra spectrum of light. Ultraviolet light is a fascinating topic that we won’t get into this week, but just know that most birds and lots of insects and other animals can see it, which means there are patterns and presumably colors that are invisible to us and incredibly obvious to birds.

Here’s an example to give you an idea how intense the different may be (again, this is not what it actually looks like because it is invisible to us):

You may have noticed before that crows don’t look black exactly. Their feathers are iridescent. You know, like an oil slick.

Here’s a short video with some more insights:

Navigating Grief and Loss

My good friend Jody McComas is a Grief Recovery Specialist. We had lunch together this week and were talking about all the many ways people around us are experiencing grief right now, whether because of the loss of a loved one, divorce, the loss of a religious community, or just the current state of everything.

Jody was telling me about her work with the Grief Recovery Institute, and I thought I’d share it with all of you. It’s a really amazing program where Jody meets with the client one-on-one or in a group for a limited time. This isn’t long-term counseling, it’s a short program that helps you really focus on dealing with grief in a focused way in a set period of time.

I’ll just add that Jody and her family are very dear friends of Krista and I, and we ministered together for a number of years. I can wholeheartedly endorse getting time with Jody. She’s an insightful person who you can trust. You can learn more and set up a free meeting to talk about the program and whether it’s a good fit for you here.

Spend some time with Saint Nick!

As we move later into November I’ll give you some more specifics about the book, and I have a few interviews and whatnot coming up, but in the meantime you can pick up copies at Hearts and Minds Books, the Nooks Gallery and Bookstore, or from your not-at-all-local gigantic corporate behemoth. If you live near me, order a copy from White Oak Books!

And as always, if you’ve read the book a review is always appreciated!

Who is the fella in this pic from 1980?

The answer below at the footnote. Vote and then take a look!1

BRUCE

With the shorter days as our hemisphere barrels along toward winter, Bruce is doing his best to fatten up even if it means he has to stand on his tiptoes to reach the butterfly bush (Is that what it’s called?! And if so why do I only see bees and hummingbirds and a single rabbit hanging around it?!).

November is speeding past us. I hope you’re able to take a few moments to stop and pet the bunnies and say hello to the crows!

Peace to you!

— Matt

The Most Dangerous Job

Take a second and imagine what you think is the most dangerous job in the United States. And by most dangerous, I mean the most fatal. The job most likely to get you killed.

The two top jobs that pop into my head are law enforcement and firefighters.

But neither of those jobs even make the top twenty-five.

The number one most fatal, most dangerous job in the United States is (drumroll please)… Tree trimmers and pruners.

I’m sad to say that we had our beloved maple in our backyard taken out recently.

Bruce, of course, had to stay in the house the whole time the tree trimmers were here because, you know… IT’S DANGEROUS. There are guys with power tools climbing a tree and taking their best guess where gigantic limbs are going to fall from a great height… and getting it wrong sometimes!

It makes sense (and no, these stats don’t include lumberjacks, who get their own entry at #4), but per capita given the number of deaths per year and the number of tree trimmers in the country, and also that complete amateurs can start a dangerous tree trimming business any time they like that yeah, it’s a dangerous line of work.

Here’s the full top 25 most dangerous jobs (see link above for more info):

1. Tree trimmers and pruners

2. Commercial pilots

3. Farm and ranch animal workers (including aquaculture)

4. Logging workers

5. Roofers

6. First-line supervisors of farming, fishing and forestry workers

7. Agricultural equipment operators

8. Heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers

9. Underground mining machine operators

10. Farm equipment mechanics and service technicians

11. Sailors and marine oilers.

12. First-line supervisors of landscaping, lawn service, and groundskeeping workers.

13. Personal service managers.

14. Audiovisual equipment installers and repairers.

15. Painters, construction and maintenance.

16. Pumping station operators.

17. Construction laborers.

18. Electrical power line installers and repairers.

19. Roustabouts, oil and gas.

20. Maintenance workers, machinery.

21. Excavating and loading machine and dragline operators, surface mining.

22. Plasterers and stucco masons.

23. Elevator and escalator installers and repairers.

24. Farmworkers and laborers, crop, nursery, and greenhouse workers.

25: Crane and tower operators.

It all makes sense if you stop and think about it, but I would have never gotten to “stucco mason” if you asked me to make a list. It’s one of those weird things, like if you asked me a few years ago “what’s the most dangerous animal on the planet” I wouldn’t say “mosquito” even though they are by far the deadliest animal on the planet.

Media plays a big role here, and not just news media. A million cop shows and movies constantly tell us that law enforcement are in constant danger and there are surprisingly few TV shows or movies about, for instance, plasterers and personal service managers.

Not to say that those other jobs aren’t dangerous, and of course these stats are just about fatalities, not other types of danger. Law enforcement is more likely (I’m guessing?!) to experience non-fatal violence than a tree trimmer, right?

I’ve been hearing a lot recently — and I’m guessing you have, too — about how dangerous it is to be an ICE agent. I’m going to put this in its own section further down in the newsletter for the people who cannot bear to talk about this, but when I finally went to look into ICE agent fatalities I was shocked by the numbers. I think you’ll find it interesting whatever your political persuasion, but I’ll put it a couple sections down below.

Halloween Around Here

Halloween is my 16 year old’s favorite holiday, so we always have a bunch of teens running around here for a party, and she and her best friend love to go out and hit the neighborhood to gather candy. Here they are in their matching outfits this year:

I don’t usually get dressed up but I thought it would be fun to hand out candy in costume this year, so I did:

It definitely short-circuited some kids’ brains when I opened the door. There was a lot of “Happy Hallow—- Merry? Christmas?”

At least one kid asked me if I was the “real” Santa and his mom said, “Maybe” and I was like, ha ha ha, oh no Santa doesn’t live HERE, I’m just his friend and I’m handing out candy.

Anyway, you know where this is going.

If you haven’t bought my new book, PRAYING WITH SAINT NICHOLAS, it is a great time to get a copy. It’ll be a really meaningful and enjoyable read in the weeks to come.

You can pick up copies at Hearts and Minds Books, the Nooks Gallery and Bookstore, or from your not-at-all-local gigantic corporate behemoth. If you live near me, order a copy from White Oak Books! They’d be happy to hook you up.

If you’ve already got a copy, please consider writing a review! It’s super helpful.

And, of course, as the kids in my neighborhood and all retailers like to say, Happy Hallow-Merry Christmas!

I recently became aware of Labi Siffre

British songwriter and poet. Listen to his beautiful song “Bless the Telephone” above. I’m really enjoying getting to know his music a bit!

How many ICE agents have died in the line of duty since 2003?

Okay, skip this if you can’t bear to talk about ICE.

One note on the front end here: I’m a pacifist, and I don’t condone state-sponsored violence or violence against officers of the state.

With that out of the way, I want you to come up with two numbers. Take a moment and think about ICE enforcement. How many agents do you think have died *in the line of duty* since ICE was founded in 2003? And, second number, how many ICE agents have *been murdered* since 2003?

Now you already know that I’m writing this partly because I discovered it was lower than I expected. So keep that in mind and ask yourself again: how many ICE agents have died, how many have been murdered since 2003?

Okay, one more hint before I reveal the number: law enforcement doesn’t make the top 25 most fatal jobs in the US, and the risk of violence to ICE officers is much lower than law enforcement generally… about a third of the risk.

I’m trying to play fair here and make sure you get a chance to guess a low number.

Here we go, the number of ICE agents who died on duty in the last 22 years:

29

So, yes, that works out to just a little more than one a year (we’ll see in a minute where most of those deaths came from, though).

Okay, now, most of those were not *murders*. So how many ICE agents were *murdered* in the last two decades and change?

2

Now, again, it’s a tragedy when anyone dies, and a horrific tragedy when someone is murdered. But for comparison’s sake, at least 23 people have died in ICE custody since January. It’s significantly more dangerous to be in ICE custody than to be an ICE officer.

And that’s not controversial or political, that’s just the straight-up facts.

But let’s explore the actual fatalities for ICE officers. Since ICE was founded in 2003 there have been 29 ICE agents who died in the line of duty. It breaks down like this:

15 from COVID19

7 from 9-11 related illness

2 Gunfire

1 Gunfire (accidental)

1 “duty related illness” (this was dengue fever it turns out)

1 heart attack

1 Training accident

1 vehicular assault

You might be surprised to find things like Covid, a heart attack, and and 9-11 related illnesses on the list (especially given that 9-11 happened almost two years before ICE was a thing).

It’s actually common in law enforcement to be generous in counting various illnesses and heart attacks and strokes and so-on as “in the line of duty” fatal injury for a variety of reasons, but one of the big ones is that it provides some specific financial benefits to the family survivors after their death. Honestly, I have zero issue with this, but I do think it’s helpful to break out the numbers and look at them like we’re doing here.

And yes, Covid specifically could 100% be a situation where their actual duty put them at greater risk… while we were safely at home they may have been out doing their job in a way that made their risk of infection greater.

I don’t mind at all counting illness and so on as an “in the line of duty” fatal injury, as it helps the families with what’s available to them financially afterwards, but also I do think it’s important to acknowledge that since 2003 there have been a total of TWO murders of ICE agents.

Let’s talk about the two murders of federal agents in the last two decades.

One: Assistant SAC David Gray Wilhelm was in the wrong place at the wrong time. A fugitive broke into his home, found out he was a federal agent and killed him. Not exactly “in the line of duty” but definitely because of his job, too, right? Tragic and horrible, but also not an immigrant and not during immigration enforcement.

Two: Special Agent Jaime Jorge Zapata was shot and killed by cartel members in Mexico. Again, super awful, but also again not an immigrant and not even in the United States.

(“Vehicular assault” might also look like an intentional murder, but in this case the death was Special Agent J. Scott McGuire, who was standing on a sidewalk when he was hit by a drunk driver who jumped the curb. So definitely a tragedy but not an intentional murder of an ICE agent.)

You can see more about the men and women who died while serving in ICE at the ICE Honor Wall here. As you can see, I took all the stats from ICE itself.

And again, death is not the only danger for law enforcement. The Department of Homeland Security has claimed many, many times that they are seeing a “1,000% increase” in assaults of ICE officers, though they can’t seem to produce evidence of that and certainly we’ve not seen a 1,000% increase in prosecutions, or even a 200% increase in prosecutions.

Which is only to say this:

Beware of people who are telling you that it’s super super dangerous to be an ICE officer and that’s why it’s understandable that they would do violence to immigrants, trample on human or civil rights, or why they have to break the law to do their jobs. It’s just not true. It’s an excuse based in fear-mongering, not in facts.

Death is a tragedy, whether it’s 29 ICE agents over the course of two decades or 23 immigrants over the course of the last ten months in ICE detention.

Also, media is enormously effective and influential in shaping our fears. There’s a reason I’m afraid of great white sharks and not particularly worried about getting bitten by a dog, even though on average five times more people in the US die because of dog attacks rather than shark attacks.

I mean, honestly, there are animals out here killing people that I am not worried about AT ALL. Like freshwater snails aren’t even on my radar. In 2016 mosquitos killed more people than people killed.

And hey, this chart doesn’t even include cows, which are pretty deadly. Just the US numbers put them well above the global count for sharks or wolves.

This is, by the way, what psychologist call the “availability heuristic.” Our brains are working hard to calculate the world around us to make good decisions. And especially when it comes to danger, the brain wants to make shortcuts so decisions can be made as quickly as possible. Basically your brain says “how likely is this thing to happen” based on how easily and quickly it can pull up an example of it.

So that’s why you’re probably more worried about sharks than tapeworms.

It’s why you’re more worried about kids being harmed by strangers instead of people they know, despite the fact that 90%+ of child abuse/abduction/harm is done by people the child knows.

It’s why if I say “picture a terrorist” some people might picture a middle eastern man instead of — what is far more common in the US at least — a white guy who holds to white supremacist beliefs.

Media radically complicates what’s available to our brain, because the worn and reworn stories we ingest teach us that certain things are more common, despite them being stories and not direct experiences.

There are, of course, real world consequences to this as well. When heavily armed agents have an availability heuristic that tells them that agents are in greater danger than they are, the likelihood that they will misjudge the situation and overreact — with more fear, violence, or anger than is warranted — increases. So whether that twisted heuristic is coming from ingesting media or from political speeches or from the organization itself, what’s clear is that being an ICE agent is not without risks, but it’s also significantly less dangerous than, for instance, being a roofer.

Bruce at the vet

About a month ago our poor pal was acting a bit lethargic and — in a clear sign of illness in this unstoppable eating machine — not particularly interested in food.

I took him to the vet where they told me (over and over) that he is the healthiest bunny they’ve ever seen and how nice and chill he was and how they were amazed that he was not afraid of any cat or dog in the place (on the contrary, he wanted to fight them).

Turns out he just needed some painkillers to help him get through the fact that he probably ate something he shouldn’t have or maybe got scared by something and it messed up his digestion (again, the guy will fight any animal, so this seems less likely).

He felt better in less that 24 hours and now he’s back to his old self!

Here’s hoping you’re feeling well and eating well! Peace to you!

— Matt

That doesn’t preclude, of course, an “exceptional” member of another race being *just as good* as a white person. It doesn’t mean you couldn’t have a just awful white person who is exceptionally stupid or bad or whatever and thus just as terrible as someone from another race (which is where, by the way, we get the concept of “white trash”).

But the core idea here is that, all things being equal, in general, a white person — and ABSOLUTELY white people as a whole — is better than people of other races.

So let’s look at a few social media posts that may seem harmless at first glance but reveal some good ol’ white supremacy.

1. Why are America’s small towns so placid and lovely?

So here’s a post that is very interesting and we’ll learn a few things here.

One, note that there’s not actually a question here (the lack of a question mark being a clue to that). The poster isn’t *actually* wondering anything or asking anything… he’s *suggesting* something.

Two, although I didn’t include a link to the video the poster is sharing, we can make a pretty clear guess from the pic: there’s a cute white lady about to show us around “her town.”

If you watched the video you’d discover she lives in a small, mostly white, town. So the suggestion here absolutely appears to be: In places where it’s mostly white people, crime rates are lower because white people in general are more law-abiding (and placid and lovely and orderly) than people of other races.

Three, “Yeah but he never said that directly.” Correct. It’s very common for public-facing white supremacist content to be purposely vague, or require the reader to fill-in-the-blanks, or be a “dog whistle” (in other words, very clear to one population and invisible to another). Many white supremacists, knowing that their ideology is not widely beloved when overtly stated, work hard to have deniability.

Could context change the meaning of this post? Yes. If the guy posting was the owner of a small coffee shop and the girl in the video was showing how there was no Starbucks or corporate coffee in her town, sure. But that’s not what’s happening here.

2. Let’s ban third world immigration

It’s not so long ago that we talked about the third world here in this newsletter. In many circles today it’s another way of saying “the global south” and in white supremacist circles it’s a more polite way of saying “black and brown people.”

So what’s being suggested here is NO LEGAL PATHWAY for black or brown immigrants to enter the United States. Might some “exceptional” black or brown people get in? Mmmmmmaybe if they are already culturally assimilated into “first world” countries.

Because, note, third world immigrants have brought “cultural problems” (undefined). Any other problems in the United States (education, housing, the financial system, “essential services”) are ALL *because of* the presence of black and brown people in the United States.

Is there a context where this is not a white supremacist point of view?

Not that I can think of.

3. Multiculturalism is a failure

This one’s relatively straightforward: multiculturalism is a failure. What’s the alternative to multiculturalism? Monoculture.

So the question becomes, which monoculture are we requiring everyone to adopt?

A white supremacist would suggest we adopt the best culture, which is clearly “white culture” (leaving aside the fact that there is no white monoculture, but that doesn’t really matter because the argument here is not for an actual monoculture but for *doing away with* “unsavory” cultures. Like, you know, third world stuff.) Weird sidenote: many white supremacists “look back” to the glory of the Greek or Roman empire and really want to adopt those as emblematic of the glory of white culture. Which is super hilarious to anyone who knows history or even knows the history of whiteness, because neither Greeks nor Italians were considered white until very recent history.

Could someone mean something different than what a white supremacist means here? Yeah, but it’s almost always a supremacy of some type. If Russia managed to subsume Ukraine, for instance, and made everyone speak Russian, that’s movement toward monoculture that’s not white supremacy, it’s Russian supremacy.

An American white guy promoting monoculture is pretty much always a white supremacist.

4. The Great Replacement Theory

This is a white supremacist statement, full stop.

The Great Replacement Theory is a white supremacist, white nationalist conspiracy theory invented by French author Renaud Camus. It’s a subset of another type of conspiracy theory called white genocide theory. White genocide started out as a primarily anti-semitic theory, which Camus— concerned about the influx of Muslim immigrants to France — took and adapted to be anti-Muslim.

The basic idea is that there are “influential forces”(originally Jewish, then Muslim in France, and in the US often it’s people of color or “the Jews” or Muslims because in the US we’re glad to target all of them) who are working in shadowy secret places to completely do away with white people and white culture. This is bad not just because whiteness must be preserved, but also because whiteness is inherently superior.

If you ever see guys walking around with torches and shouting, “They will not replace us!” you’ve found your local loud and proud white supremacists.

Now, just to be clear: not all white supremacists believe in the Great Replacement theory. But all Great Replacement theorists are white supremacists.

The Venn diagram would look like this:

Which is only to say that if someone believes the Great Replacement Theory, they are, by definition, also white supremacists.

Also of interest: while white supremacists fall all across the political spectrum — there are plenty of Leftist white supremacists — the Great Replacement Theory is a special bit of rightwing conspiracy theory. It’s one of those theories that tells you a lot about a person as soon as they associate with it: they are right wing, they are white supremacist, they are not particularly interested in history or science except as a political tool, etc.

Yeah but wait a second

So I could see someone reasonably saying, “Okay, I get it. That last one in particular seems pretty straightforward. But does saying something like, ‘multiculturalism is a failure’ truly make someone a white supremacist?”

And that’s a really, really good point. There could be someone who really honestly just has some questions about multiculturalism and that’s as far as it goes.

But here’s the big reveal: all four of these posts are from the same person!

Which is another really common thing about white supremacy: it tends to invade everything. You’re not likely to find someone who has only ever said one white supremacist thing or just has one small overlap with white supremacist thought. It’s an invasive philosophy that bleeds into a bunch of other areas. It wants to be the central philosophy in a person’s world and it tends to corrupt, consume, or replace other thoughts (religious, philosophical, political).

So if we look at these four posts in context with one another, knowing they all come from the same person, they reinforce one another. Start from the bottom:

* Post #4 — This guy believes the Great Replacement Theory. He thinks people of color are trying to get rid of white people in a cultural or actual genocide (or both).
* This informs #3. What does he mean when he says multiculturalism has failed? Well, it’s being used as a weapon against white culture. So the only thing to be done is to enforce a white monocultural while there’s still time!
* Which informs #2 — why does this guy think we should keep black and brown people out of the US? Because white folks need to consolidate their power, and reclaim their culture and their political power.
* Which gives us insight into #1. “Was he *actually* saying that small towns are less crime-ridden because they have more white people and fewer people of color?” Yup, turns out he was!

Anyway, it’s a fun little exercise and a reminder that white supremacy *can* seem hard to spot sometimes, but with a little bit of work, an open mind, and lots of context, we can often be certain that someone’s a white supremacist, whether they publicly accept the label or not.

What do you think?

P.S. I got into this particular conversation due to a series of articles that my friend Clay Morgan has been writing about the history of modern evangelicalism. You can read his most recent post here.

Something fun to do this weekend!

Whew! That was a little intense. If you’re in the Portland, Oregon area this weekend, you might enjoy coming to Green Bean Books this Sunday at 2pm to hear storytime from local (awesome) author Jenn Reese. Her new book Seven Ways through the Woods just came out!

My favorite thing on the internet this week

This is clearly fake but like lots of fake things it made me laugh!

You should probably get this book before December 1st

I am NOT saying “Christmas is coming.” I am NOT saying you need to think about that one bit (I personally wait until the day after Thanksgiving). But I AM saying that this is a book that would be of particular enjoyment if read this December, and it did come out this week after all.

Bruce!

When I sit outside to read he likes to hang out under my chair! He’s the best pet! He’s regal and kind-hearted. He requires very little cleaning up after. He likes to cuddle a little bit sometimes. ONLY A LITTLE BIT. Is he the best? Yes! I have already said this!

Peace to you this week,

Matt

Christmas is my favorite holiday.

I know, I know, it’s too commercial, and the pressure of making it perfect can be stressful, and yes, so-and-so is never satisfied with their gifts, and candy canes look better than they taste (also, don’t panic! It’s still September).

But I love—have always loved—Christmas. Not only because of the carefully wrapped presents and the jolly lights, the loving family, the parties, the singing. I love Christmas because I’m hungry for miracles.

I want angels appearing in the dark, visions and dreams and a star in the east that tells the wise, “A great king is born!” I want to see Jesus, wrapped in cloths, lying in his mother’s arms, the newborn who existed before creation, choosing to pitch a tent next to ours for a while.

And I want the simpler miracles too: armies putting down their guns on Christmas Eve, or a stranger helping someone in need find shelter, or just adults tucking kids into bed and saying, “Tomorrow something wonderful is going to happen,” and then working hard to create wonder.

And, yes, I love Santa Claus. Or, as we sometimes call him, Saint Nicholas. Honestly, I knew a lot more about the jolly elf who magically flies around the world in one evening than about the historical person he’s based on. Still, I thought I had a pretty good idea of who the historical Nicholas was: he had thrown some gold in a window or down a chimney or something like that, he was a leader in the church, and he also loved Christmas.

But as I researched Saint Nicholas—the history, the myths, the legends—I found myself deeply moved by a story that was completely foreign to me. I had heard little bits before, but seeing it all together painted the portrait of a man I found not just interesting, but inspiring. My respect grew from “He’s the guy who loves Christmas” to “How can I be more like Nicholas in my daily life?”

He was someone hungry for miracles too. He paid attention to the people around him and asked how he could help. If they needed money, or a protector, or a prayer, Nicholas provided it for them as a servant of God. He became God’s miracle for them.

Christmas as we know it—the religious celebration of the birth of Christ—didn’t even exist until the last few years of Nicholas’s life. But as I got to know this man better, I understood why we’ve come to associate him with Christmas. He loved children. He loved to give gifts. He spent several years living near Bethlehem. He couldn’t help but keep turning his attention to the most vulnerable people in his world: children, single women, the poor.

There are few other believers in the history of the church who have become so universally beloved in the Christian community (and beyond). And while there are amazing legends and myths and exaggerations that eventually lead us to a jolly old elf at the North Pole handing out gifts for Christmas, all of this started from a single seed of truth: a man who loved Jesus, and loved people, and dedicated his life to bringing gifts to the needy.

And honestly, the story of Nicholas is perfect in our fraught contemporary times. This is a man who was thrown in prison for his faith, fought with heretics, lived through war and pestilence and famine, but also rose to prominence in an empire that suddenly saw Christian leaders as part of the government… and through it all, he stayed faithful, not throwing away his faith when threatened or when offered political power in exchange.

Whether you read it as an individual or together with a book club or small group, I hope you’ll enjoy getting to know Saint Nicholas.

My good friends at Hearts and Minds Bookstore would be glad to send you a copy in plenty of time for the holidays.

If you’re in the Vancouver, WA area, my local bookstore White Oak Books will hold a copy for pickup OR ship one to you.

And of course the complete strangers at Amazon are also glad to send goods in exchange for money.

What this disguises is how incredibly common political violence is, and the fact that not only do most people NOT want to stop political violence, many people are proponents of it in the broader sense. So what I’m NOT saying is “most people want assassins to kill people they disagree with” but rather that most people are perfectly happy to embrace/approve/ignore political violence… if it preserves something they care about or changes something they dislike.

So let’s get a definition of political violence on the table, and then we can take a closer look at how prevalent it is in the world, and in American politics in general.

Most definitions boil down to something along these lines:

Political violence is the use of force to achieve a political goal (to enforce or disrupt a certain political order). 2

I find the “enforce or disrupt a political order” as a helpful place to start our examination here.

Examples of political violence designed to disrupt political order:

• Assassinations done by civilians

• Terrorism

• Riots

• Revolutions

• civil war

• international war (often)

• electoral violence

If you take a moment to look at this list, there are likely several that you say to yourself, “Yup, 100% against that.” Might be terrorism, for instance. Hard to think of a situation where I’m pro-terrorism.

Americans and people in democracies often find ourselves anti-revolution, too, which is hilarious given how we became a democracy. But that’s sort of the American footnote: pro-revolution so long as the revolutionaries are moving toward a democracy. You want to overthrow a king or dictator? All for it. Overthrow an elected official? Hmmmm not so sure. Are they in my party or the other one?

Civil wars are interesting, because typically one side is trying to disrupt political order while the other could be trying to preserve it. So let’s talk about that side of things as well.

Examples of political violence designed to preserve political order:

• State-sponsored assassinations

• civil war

• international wars (often)

• extra-judicial killings

• capital punishment

• police brutality

• torture

• ethnic cleansing

• genocide

• governmental inaction (for instance, artificially created famine, refusing to fund hospitals, removing aid as a political tool)

State-sponsored political violence is shockingly common. In fact, what most governments want is not an end to political violence, but a monopoly on it.

When you look at the history of US government state-sponsored assassinations, for instance, you’ll see that much of it in the last couple of decades is killing people in the Middle East. Typically this is because the people being killed have been involved in terrorism in some way. But say we killed them in a drone strike somewhere, we don’t typically count the others — sometimes innocent people at a wedding, or children of the person we were targeting — as either an assassination or political violence, though it is certainly both.

Extra-judicial killings (meaning we give someone the death penalty without first having a judge weigh in) happen more-or-less daily in the United States3. I find it helpful to think about these cases in the context of capital punishment. “He got the death penalty for stealing a pack of cigarettes.” “He got the death penalty for running away from ICE agents.” “She got the death penalty for sleeping in her own apartment that a convict had once stayed over in.”

Extra-judicial killings can be accidental and in the moment, but they can also be planned. For instance, the US government murdering US citizens Fred Hampton or John Africa and some of their compatriots were planned, resourced, and executed with intention by government agencies.

Earlier this month the US blew up a boat from Venezuela, killing all 11 people on board. These are extra-judicial killings. Who were those people? What was their crime? What evidence did we have against them? No judge weighed in on it. No court decided if there was sufficient evidence. We’re not at war with Venezuela. The US decided they were drug smugglers (which, coincidentally, is not a crime generally considered worthy of capital punishment) and killed them4. (This is leaving aside that — according to most folks who have looked at what facts we’ve been provided — it’s very unlikely that the boat only had drug smugglers on it, and it looks unlikely — even if some people on the boat were in the drug trade — that the boat’s cargo was headed to the U.S.)

Capital punishment is also state sponsored political violence. People in the US largely take the death penalty for granted in a sort-of “everyone has to do this terrible thing” sort of way, but in reality 70% of nations in the world have either abolished or completely suspended the death penalty.

Allow me to paraphrase a sadly ironic comment I saw multiple times this last week: “Those who commit political violence must receive the death penalty.”

I saw a politician suggest this. The clear message is not against political violence, but against non-governmental agents enacting political violence.

Here are some clear examples of our ordinary political violence:

• The 9-11 attacks that ended with 2,977 innocents dead was 100% an act of political violence.

• The 4.5 MILLION+ deaths in post 9-11 war zones are also death as a result of political violence. This includes nearly a million direct deaths, with close to half of those being civilians. It includes millions of people dying as a result of malnutrition, the destruction of infrastructure, loss of hospitals and so on. It includes at least 15,000 US citizens (soldiers and contractors) dead… five times the number killed in the terrorist attack. See more here.

• Drone attacks are political violence.

• The deaths of Mark and Melissa Hortman, Brian Thompson, and Charlie Kirk all were political violence.

• The January 6th attack on the capital was political violence.

• Police officers using tear gas or batons or less-lethal ammunition on protestors is political violence. Protestors responding with violence to that violence is political violence.

Interestingly, democracies typically have lower levels of political violence than autocracies. The prevailing theory is that this is because when people are angry about their government’s direction there is (theoretically) a release valve that allows them to make changes, AND that democratic authorities are more readily able to use other tools to preserve power rather than violence5.

Recent studies suggest that as democracies slide toward autocracy, there is measurable increase in violence: both state-sponsored and civilian-initiated. It’s a sign of (a) autocratic authorities protecting their power and (b) increasing citizen distrust that democratic processes will work to effect change. In fact, the entire “Second Amendment” culture of gun-owners is built around a core fear of autocratic rule, with the presumption being that gun ownership works as a deterrent to prevent it: citizens retain their weapons, preventing a state monopoly on violence.

Meanwhile, note that the Civil Rights movement was a largely non-violent movement, but the opposition to it was heavily empowered by political violence.

Increased political polarization and increased demonization of rivals, connected with a disappearance of bipartisan political processes leads to an erosion of trust in democracy (“What will THEY do if they get power”) and, in turn, to increasing thoughts that political violence may be beneficial… especially for those who feel marginalized in some way (and these days even the most powerful people are glad to tell you how marginalized they feel).

Put that together with an actual increase in autocratic behavior, even in the short term or for good reason (see people’s responses to the COVID protocols globally) OR people believing there is an increase in autocratic behavior (“they stole the election!”) and you’re headed toward an increase in violence.

And political violence like assassinations tend to come in waves. Because once “they” kill one of “mine” there are people who think, well, we have no choice but to strike back.

In the past in the US we often had a single issue people were polarized on — Civil Rights or Vietnam — but we’ve now reached a moment where the average person on the street may see the opposition political party as wholly evil and be polarized on every topic.

I fear a lot of Americans want political violence to stop happening to THEM, and they’re willing to enact political violence to get their way, which will, ironically, increase the violence.

All of which to say, I would LOVE for us to do a deep dive conversation about political violence, and not just one aspect of it. Assassinations are reprehensible… and so is much of political violence more broadly.

This week I learned about “tooth-in-eye” surgery

I’m not going to include any pics here, but if you want to see an article about a blind guy whose blindness was reversed because doctors implanted one of his own teeth in his eye, have I got an article for you.

Turns out tooth-in-eye surgery isn’t even a new thing. It was invented in the 60s and look I’m not gonna give you the whole spiel here for any of my squeamish friends, but it’s super interesting and apparently it works great!

Another super fascinating recent medical thing: it appears that people who get the shingles vaccine have a TWENTY PERCENT lower risk of dementia.

AI + Dinosaurs

My high school daughter’s English teacher is over-relying on AI in a way that is causing some upheaval. I was showing someone how easy it is to get false information and “hallucinations” (also known as “made up stuff”) from AI.

I chatted with GPT for a while, trying to get it to tell me about the history of literacy among dinosaurs. While it resisted at first by claiming that dinosaurs did not have the capacity for symbolic thought (is that even true?!) and lacked the necessary manual dexterity to write.

One of the things about most AI (large language models, at least) is that they are designed overall to be pretty positive. The programmers want you to keep engaging. So it’s pretty easy to get AI to say what you want it to… whether because you force it to (like I did) or because your own biases (or the biases of its training material, or the programmers) move it away from facts and toward fantasy.

Anyway, I asked it to give me a “funny chart” that compared and contrasted the reading and writing abilities of dinosaurs and humans. And it gave me this:

As you can see, it goes like this:

Panel 1: A dinosaur is using its symbolic thought (“?”) to study a stick.

Panel 2: The dinosaur is writing with the stick.

Panel 3: A modern human is doing some cuneiform writing. It’s hard and frustrating.

Panel 4: Another human is writing on a computer, which is easy!

And then a pie chart that shows that 66ish% of writing ability belongs to humans, and 33ish% belong to dinosaurs. I could not stop laughing. The AI had completely folded.

Which is only to say, large language models are a tool and they’re good at a certain very narrow set of things. Don’t use them for everything! Don’t be fooled that they’re some magical tool.

will go here unless I forget to check if I left any placeholder stuff in the newsletter, in which case you’re just gonna see this note, which isn’t really ha-ha funny.

Speaking of writing

This coming Tuesday my new book, PRAYING WITH SAINT NICHOLAS comes out! Order today to get it on release day!

BIRD NEWS: five birds of prey have teamed up to protect the crops of a winery in East Sussex

It’s kind of like a heist movie but in reverse. A motley assortment of birds of prey, each with a particular skill, have teamed up to keep other birds from the treasure: a whole lot of grapes. You can read the story here.

BRUCE

We’re in that season when Bruce is putting on his winter coat (and winter pounds) but the weather keeps dipping back into summer, cause him to melt into a pool of rabbit for a nap.

I hope this in-between season is treating you well.

Peace to you!

Matt

Modernism was a movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that really came about as a result of the rising tides of secularism and science. Far from being conservative, it was actually a movement that encouraged new thoughts, progress, and experimentation.

The idea was to explore long-held beliefs and throw them out if they weren’t correct. PROGRESS! A BRIGHTER TOMORROW! SCIENCE WILL MAKE THE WORLD BETTER! And so on.

Modernism was sort of the logical outcome of Romanticism and we see a lot of the cultural values bleeding through, especially the optimism about the future and what might be coming, the belief that humanity could better itself, and that science was the key to a beautiful life with jetpacks and shining cities (although many of the more artistic arms of modernism were violently opposed to capitalism in particular).

If you look at it through the artistic lens, you start seeing things like abstract painting, cubism, impressionism, futurism… these are all modernist art movements that rejected past ideas (like realism) in favor of new ideas… color and shapes as the basis of art, the power of emotion, the promise of the future.

Does absolute truth exist? Sure! We just have to find it.

How do we discover truth (artistic, religious, moral)? Experimentation (science can help us here).

Whether it’s art, dance, social sciences, politics, what we see in the modernist movement is a huge influx of new innovation, interpretation, and experimentation with a largely optimistic outlook. Even if things are terrible, we trust they can get better!

In religious spaces, modernism pushed toward historicity and humanism. Human beings grew in authority and their place in the cosmology. In the Christian sphere, things like the rise of Liberal (again, not necessarily in the political sense) scholarship led to examining “whether miracles happened” and digging into manuscript transmission. The rise of Fundamentalist Christianity (trying to protect and defend Biblical authority being a key piece of the movement) is tied directly into modernism.

For instance, it’s difficult to imagine a MORE modernist theological work than Evidence that Demands a Verdict by Josh McDowell, the entire point of which is, “Let’s take a look at what SCIENCE has to say about the validity of the Bible.” We’re humans, we can figure this out!

Two little ironies here: 1. On the front end, the church was not a big fan of modernism or, for that matter, the Enlightenment (“what do you MEAN dinosaur bones are a critique of the Genesis narrative? God put those here to test us!“) and 2. The book in question here is pretty late in Modernism for a prototypical modernist book BUT the church tends to be decades behind in these things. By the 70s the church had adopted a lot of modernist thought and was gearing up to battle post-modernism (again, really several decades after postmodernism was well established).

Okay, I won’t spend as long on postmodernism because this is one of those times where the newsletter service is about to not send the email because it’s too long (it happens! Sorry! You don’t have to read this!).

Postmodernism came along and we’ll keep it simple: postmodernism said we should question modernity and emphasized the subjective nature of human experience. “Reality is constructed” not “discovered.” Big emphasis on understanding language and culture, and a lot of skepticism, the rise of irony as a cultural value, and a rejection of “universal” truths (essentially a skeptical view of science).

Rock music generally is a great place to look at cultural shift, especially what younger people are doing in the moment, and I love Smells Like Teen Spirit as a great example of postmodernist music.

It’s ironic, the lyrics barely make sense in places (you have to construct the meaning, right?), and like a lot of postmodernism it’s very happy to appropriate the work of other people (a riff clearly inspired by a song from Boston, pulling in some Pixies), and with a pretty cynical take on life, teenagers, rock music, and a call to wake up to something more.

Also turns out that Teen Spirit was the name of a deodorant (though Kurt Cobain didn’t know that when he wrote it… his girlfriend in a drunken moment wrote “Kurt smells like Teen Spirit” on the wall of his apartment and he thought it was meant as a compliment. Yet another irony).

Ironically, by the time postmodernism hit the Christian spiritual crowd, the evangelical church had — after initially fighting it — deeply embraced modernism. So the idea of “deconstructing” (a very deeply postmodern idea) was not just opposed but routinely marked as evil. The modernist church’s inability to make room for or understand their (culturally) postmodern children led to enormous fractures that are still working their way out… mostly in destructive ways.

It’s weird, too, because postmodernism has some values that Christian communities of the past would have embraced: a higher value on spirituality rather than science, skepticism toward authorities, an encouragement to appropriate other cultures and works of art and points of view.

Probably my favorite (Christian/evangelical) example of modernism and postmodernism is “The Four Spiritual Laws” which is a very heavily modernist religious tract (“Just as there are physical laws which govern the physical universe, so are there laws that govern your relationship with God”). But as missionaries saw that presentation become less and less compelling to college students, the tract was adapted to become “Knowing God Personally.” Just the title shift tells us there’s a different value set being addressed, right? It’s more mystical (God can be known, not just “here are some laws that universally apply”), and it’s more personal (right there in the title… focused on YOUR INDIVIDUAL EXPERIENCE).

For me and my generation (Gen X forever), we grew up already implanted in postmodernism. I never fully experienced the modernist culture… though I undoubtedly came closest when I was at church.

Which brings us to metamodernism, which is 100% more where I see my kids, for instance, living.

Metamodernism turns the deconstructive urges of postmodernism in on itself. It takes a skeptical view of the skepticism of postmodernism and says, more or less, wait a minute, aren’t there things that are true in both modernism and postmodernism.

So where modernism says “we must have hope about the future, because humanity and science will always keep improving” and postmodernism says, “we are right to be skeptical because look at all the terrible things that have been done… authorities can’t be trusted and science if often wrong or corrupted by capitalism”, metamodernism says, “You’ve both got a point and you’re both also wrong.”

Metamodernism is often described as a pendulum between modernism and postmodernism, seeing value in taking both or either position depending on the time and location. And it’s not a synthesis… not just a simple bringing together of both cultural views, but rather a swinging between them. It’s both and neither.

Which means you get honesty and even cynicism about the destructive forces in the world (which modernism tends to downplay or see as easily overcome) AND ALSO hope and bright thoughts about possible tomorrows (which postmodernism struggles to achieve) AND ALSO cynicism (postmodernism) AND ALSO that maybe human beings can figure things out (modernism). Here’s a good but simple description.

I first started reading about metamodernism because of a couple of articles from my friend Mark Rodgers, who was writing about the new Superman movie. And believe me I would LOVE to dig into the history of comics through a modern (the birth of superheroes!), postmodern (the death of superheroes!), and metamodern (the rebirth of superheroes!) lens, but that’s a whole book not a wrap-up to a single article.

Or maybe I’ll just do an article about Superman movies that fall into each category, because it’s one of the reasons so many people love, for instance, the Man of Steel (a cynical, deconstructed Superman) and so many people hate it (because Superman as a character was designed as a partially Modernist character… inherently hopeful and believing in the ability to overcome the worst things about society… so a cynical version of the character feels like a misunderstanding of the character).

Anyway: metamodernism. I’m pretty interested in it as a movement.

The Best Thing on the Internet (flashback!)

Back when Twitter had fun content, you couldn’t beat the Moon Pie social media account.

You can read more about the weird but surprisingly kind-hearted MoonPie social media presence and the dude who mostly ran it here.

The iron fountain in Gyumri

I gotta be honest, when I first saw this I thought it was an AI pic.

The iron fountain is a piece of Soviet-era art, designed by Armenian architect Artur Tarkhanyan and finished in 1982. It stands in the city of Gyumri. Unfortunately, a massive earthquake six years later wrecked a lot of the city. In fact, the fountain was one of the few things still standing afterward.

If you want to see some weird and wonderful things, go check out the “youth palace” he helped design and the memorial to the Armenian genocide that he was the architect on.

In the meantime, here’s a pic of the fountain when it was in its prime:

BRUCE

Here he is, getting some porch time. What’s great about this particular corner of the porch is that it has an umbrella, so Bruce doesn’t have to keep an eye out for birds of prey. We do get bald eagles, hawks, and osprey flying overhead from time to time. Bruce typically naps either directly under something (a tree, a tarp, a hammock, a roof) or somewhere that he perfectly blends in to the ground.

There are some scary things out there in the world, but then again, you know, this is the life Bruce lives. You still have to find some places where you can unwind, relax, feel relatively safe and take a nap with your eyes open.

It’s a good reminder from Bruce that whatever is going on in life you’ve still got to make a little space to relax. Here’s hoping you can find your own umbrella this week!

Peace to you!

Matt

You can see Lindsey’s entire list here:

The Conversational Life

Guns, Peace, and the Christian Response

Hey, readers. Lindsey here. On Tuesday, my oldest son turned twelve years old. The next morning, at a Catholic school in Minneapolis, a shooter murdered two children and injured more than a dozen mor…

Read more

a year ago · 6 likes · 3 comments · Lindsey Cornett

I’m looking at the art of Anastasia Trusova

I stumbled on Anastasia Trusova’s art this week. I find a lot of it so interesting and compelling and beautiful. You can see her site here.

I learned a new word this week: “fedposting”

I share a lot of immigration stories on my Facebook, and when a post goes viral I get a lot of gross comments after a while (nearly all of them from strangers). Some of them are race-based evil comments, but others are these weird, violent threats… against current politicians, ICE agents, etc.

I’m a pacifist myself, so I feel sad when I see this and typically either delete or hide those kinds of comments.

This week I saw this same thing happening on another person’s post and they just straight up said, “Hey, I don’t host fedposting here.”

Like a lot of slang, it turns out this is a pretty nuanced word with a few different meanings.

The surface meaning is something like this: “fedposting” is an accusation that someone is an undercover federal officer. The idea being that, say, an FBI agent is undercover, trying to get you to say or agree to something illegal in your comments.

But the more nuanced meaning (and what I’ve seen most often as I’m looking around for it) is that the whole “you’re a fed” piece of it is not 100 percent literal. It’s not a true accusation, because the person saying it’s a “fedpost” doesn’t care if the commenter is truly a fed.

Instead, what they’re pointing out is “this is a dangerous comment” or is a bad practice. They don’t have to say if they agree or disagree with the comment, what they’re pointing out is, “This is the kind of comment that doesn’t benefit anyone here; it’s the kind of comment that benefits authorities who are against the kind of social justice we are looking to create here.”

So, for instance:

* Threats of violence can be “fedposting” because threats of violence are used in online spaces as an excuse to shut a place down. Violent comments on a post could get the post throttled, deleted, or removed. Violent comments in an online community group could be used as an excuse to shut down a group. ILLEGAL violent comments could be used to arrest or harm members of the community who unwittingly agree to it… or are encouraged to say something similar.

* Asking anonymous fellow protestors to meet up or share their identities can be “fedposting” because it could be a way to out who is in a group.

* Inciting hate speech of any kind can be fedposting because — even if it’s not illegal — it makes the group look childish and unpleasant.

Interestingly, this slang actually comes from the far, far right side of the internet initially, and has gradually become a broader thing (I’ve seen a number of leftists using it as well).

The upshot?

Do not threaten violence on the internet, and don’t host comments from people who do.

Also don’t do any violence to people.

Best and most interesting article I read this week

Was this one about the Miccosukee people, the Native tribe that spearheaded the legal effort that led to a judge ordering the shuttering of the so-called “Alligator Alcatraz” in the Everglades. It’s a super interesting read and there were multiple unexpected bits in there for me.

If you’re looking for more articles to read, here’s the latest at my OTHER substack, “These Stories”:

THESE STORIES

"Get him, he's Mexican."

Cary Lopez Alvarado was nine months pregnant when ICE showed up on private property…

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a year ago · 26 likes · 5 comments · Matt Mikalatos

Some nature photography for your enjoyment

BRUCE

The seasons are changing around here, and you can tell by the leaves changing color or the fact that Bruce is a little more cuddly. He only sits in my lap during the fall or winter months and he’s asked to get into my lap twice in the last couple weeks. So get ready, fall is on the way.

Here’s hoping you can find someone to cuddle with as the days shorten and the nights get longer!

Peace to you,

Matt (and Bruce)

Something I learned this week

On July 16th, 1945, Barbara Kent was at a camping trip in New Mexico with a group of teen girls like her. Her dance teacher had taken her and 11 other young women on the trip.

In the early morning they heard an enormous explosion and ran outside to see a strange cloud, and the sky much brighter than it should be. So bright it hurt their eyes.

A few hours later, despite the summer heat, “snow” started to fall on the camp, and the girls raced out to play in the snow.

“We were grabbing the white flakes, and putting it all over ourselves, pressing it on our faces,” Kent said. “But the strange thing, instead of being cold like snow, it was hot. And we all thought, ‘Well, the reason it’s hot is because it’s summer.’ We were only thirteen; we didn’t know any better.”

All of the girls but Barbara would be dead before they turned thirty. Barbara’s dance teacher and her mother, who had been staying nearby, also died as a result of radiation-induced cancers. Barbara herself lived into her 70s, but battled four different kinds of cancer.

Infant mortality rates skyrocketed. Cancer rates skyrocketed. Local livestock got sick and died.

The US government, aware before the tests that radiation and fallout could be dangerous, had put protections in place for the workers on the project, but had not warned the civilian population what was going on. After the Trinity test, they lied to the public (it was a “munitions fire” that had caused the explosion) and even recognizing the damage the radiation was doing and could continue to do, did not evacuate the public or make any sort of help available until years later (in a very limited financial package for certain “downwinders”).

De-classified documents years later would show that not only were the scientists and politicians aware of the potential damage the testing could do to the human population near the test, they *waited until the wind was blowing a certain direction* to choose which population of people would be most impacted by the test (most of the nearby people — some within twelve miles of the test — were Latino/Hispanic or Indigenous).

Whenever I bring up the inherent immorality of atomic weapons and the fact that they, by design, kill more civilians than soldiers, and that the US purposely dropped them on civilian targets, there’s always someone who shows up to talk about how it was saving American lives. It’s not an argument I find very compelling generally, and I think this story of the US government killing American civilians to test the weapon shines a light on the difficulty of the moral argument here.

How many 13 year old girls is it worth killing to end a war?

It’s always interesting to me but a quick historical bit like that often loses me subscribers. I guess people don’t like learning history! Good thing I’m not out here teaching math, I’d probably lose my whole following.

Anyway, how about some new music?

What I’m listening to this week

Mon Rovîa is a self-described Afro-Appalachian folk artist, “Rescued by grace from the Civil War in Liberia” and, in Mon RovÎa’s words, “here to instill peace.” I just heard this music for the first time this week and I find it very compelling and beautiful. I hope you enjoy it.

Talking about GOD WITH US on the Wow God Stories podcast

This week I was invited to tell a little story about GOD WITH US on the Wow God Stories podcast. If you like Adventures in Odyssey you might recognize the first person to share a story on this podcast! My bit starts at about the 14:30 mark.

What I’m watching

My daughter Allie and I have just finished the first season of a TV show called Common Side Effects. The basic plot is that a man discovers a wild mushroom that can heal pretty much any sickness — Alzheimer’s, heart disease, lung infections, you name it. As he tries to figure out how to take this rare mushroom and make it available to every person on earth for free, the government and interested corporations try to figure out how to monetize it, control it, monopolize it, or destroy it.

It’s a weird, quirky, oddball, surprisingly funny adventure.

Bruce!

It was pretty hot this week, which means Bruce was largely doing his best impression of a puddle during the day. I always think it’s funny when he looks like the pic above. That one ear is turned directly toward me. He’s listening intently in case I decided to bless him with a blueberry or some other treat.

This picture is also funny. Bruce is asleep in this pic, and yes, rabbits often sleep with their eyes open. He’s torn a hole in the tarp here so he can get directly in the cool dirt, and is under this bench which is under a shady bush. I’d say it’s a good ten or twelve degrees cooler in this spot!

It was hot enough this week that we gave him some ice during the hotter parts of the day. Usually he’ll take a few licks and then leave it be, but this week he grabbed a couple pieces to put beneath himself and really cooled himself off!

I hope you get some tasty treats this week (blueberries are in season here still!) and keep cool!

Peace to you,

Matt

It’s so cute!

I love this book a lot and can’t wait (but I will) to tell you all about it.

You can preorder at your favorite bookstore. For instance, I like White Oaks Books (here in my hometown), Nooks, and Hearts and Minds. It will, of course, also be available at the various corporate behemoths as well.

Don’t worry, I’ll have LOTS MORE to say about Saint Nicholas in the months to come.

My favorite comic this week!

From Poorly Drawn Lines

Look, it’s summer here in this hemisphere, and I’m sure we all have lawns to mow and hammocks to sling in before the terrible onset of the wet cold autumn. So let’s just get straight to those bunny pictures, shall we?

He’s got his eye on you!

You cannot escape his gaze!

He sees you when you’re sleeping.

Fun fact: rabbits often so sleep with their eyes open.

Alright, friends, have a lovely week and be sure to keep an eye out/get some naps in!

Peace to you,

Matt

I know many of you have already donated (HUGE thanks to you) or shared the link (again, huge thanks!). I’ve been thinking a lot about this whole situation and it’s not appropriate for me to share any more details about this family and their situation specifically right now, but I will say this: One of the immigration lawyers I know calls the immigration system “the labyrinth” and I don’t know if there’s a more appropriate term for it. It’s confusing — sometimes on purpose, sometimes out of sheer terrible management, sometimes because private companies have monopolies and thus no need to make websites better (etc) — and it’s demoralizing (again, sometimes on purpose and sometimes just because of the way things are set up).

I got this picture from Melbourne, Australia this week

It’s really cool and a little humbling to see my work (and our team’s work!) halfway across the world in another hemisphere. The family who sent me the pic told me that they just thought it was cool to see it, but that their nine year old started looking at it, loved it, and so they bought it as well!

If you haven’t read it yet, you can get a copy wherever books are sold. If you HAVE read it, it would be a huge help if you’d post a quick review!

The Beached White Male podcast

A while back I did a conversation with Ken Kemp on his show, the Beached White Male podcast. We had a pretty wide-ranging conversation on many different topics. You can listen to the interview here:

My favorite thing on the internet this week

BRUCE IS BACK

Also, this is his back:

Side view:

From behind:

And finally, you may enjoy this picture of me. Sometimes my children pile blankets on top of me.

Have a great weekend my friend, and peace to you!

Matt