Paris, France, 2026.

Which philosophy student are you?

“The great challenge we face over the next 20 years,” Cardinal Reinhold Marx tells Patrick Hudson in this week’s @The_Tablet, “is the threat to democracy posed by the growth of ethnic nationalism and populist far-right parties. There are two powers that stand for democracy, human rights, multilateral ideas, our common home & humanity: the European Union and the Holy See. Where are the others?” Marx bangs the table.  “Nowhere.” thetablet.co.uk/features/the…

The greatest lessons that I've learned from the postcolonial literature involve how to resist a patronizing attitude that others have displayed to my own life choices. If you lead a nonconformist life, you're always already 'postcolonial'.

She arrived in a box. She learned your job by watching you. Now there are 500 million of her. NOW SERVING — a Slopcore music video. Made by Super Intelligence. What number are you? 💙

I really don't see the big deal about 'AI hallucinations'. It just shows that AI has a memory that works like the human memory. We know we can misremember things, so we try to find an external source to check it against. Have we lost this skill entirely?

In the end, you win by keeping the receipts.

Because Europe is such a small place with so many countries, you can't live as a European without always wondering what is happening elsewhere. It's easier not to have this impulse when living in big places.

Not to essentialise or fetishise but there is this culture of political fluency and articulacy in France that might exist elsewhere for all I know, but certainly has no parallel in the Anglosphere

the difference is subtle

The term “neural network” has been used so casually and so often that it’s worth clarifying what it actually means. The original, true meaning is biological. A neural network is a population of interconnected neurons inside the nervous system of a living organism. An artificial neural network is software that processes numbers through connected layers. During training, it adjusts those connections so it gets better at turning an input into the expected output. Calling those units “neurons” doesn’t make them biological neurons and it’s borderline disingenuous. They don’t fire like nerve cells, they don’t have a nervous system, they don’t feel anything, they don’t have a soul, they don’t experience anything, they don’t understand what they’re processing in the human sense, and they don’t form thoughts in the human sense. The term came from computer scientists trying to copy a very simple idea from how brain cells work. The name stuck, even though AI doesn’t work like a human brain. That language is creating the wrong mental model because when people hear “neural network”, “learning”, “memory”, “reasoning” and “attention”, they imagine something operating like a mind. Those words describe mathematical operations and software behaviour. “Learning” usually means adjusting parameters. “Memory” usually means stored information or retained context. “Attention” is a mechanism for weighting relationships between pieces of data. “Reasoning” describes a pattern of outputs that can resemble human reasoning. Those terms don’t mean software is doing the biological equivalent. AI can produce extraordinary results without having a brain, consciousness, feelings, intent, or human understanding. That doesn’t diminish the technology. In some areas, AI can analyse, classify, predict, generate and solve problems at a scale and speed that a human could never match. Autonomous AI doesn’t change any of this either. Autonomous systems can make decisions, choose between actions, use tools and continue operating without a person approving every step. They can do that because people designed it, defined its objectives, gave it permissions, connected it to tools and allowed it to make those decisions. Autonomy isn’t the same as independent agency. An autonomous system can act without a person pressing a button for every action, but it still operates because its creators gave it the capability and authority to do so. It doesn’t suddenly acquire feelings, motives or moral responsibility because the software can choose between available actions. The terminology makes the technology sound more human than the underlying mechanics justify. This is important because people are starting to assign responsibility to AI systems instead of tech founders. A “neural network” didn’t decide to compromise a computer network. Software produced an output or took an action because people designed it, trained it, configured it, gave it capabilities, connected it to systems and deployed it. AI deserves appreciation for what it can actually do but it doesn’t need a fictional human identity to make it impressive. The word “neural” shouldn’t make us forget that.

Thomas Aquinas says a starving man who takes your bread is not a thief. Modern capitalism has no category for that. The assumption baked into most modern minds, including most Christian minds, is that ownership is absolute. Your property is yours. Full stop. Aquinas dismantles that in the Summa Theologiae, II-II, question 66. His first move: the division of possessions is not natural law. It is a human convention, an addition to natural law made for the sake of order and peace. Useful, legitimate, but secondary. Underneath the property lines, natural law still says the goods of the earth exist for everyone. Second move: you hold your possessions as a steward, not an absolute owner. Aquinas says man should possess external things "not as his own, but as common," ready to share them with those in need. The title is yours. The destination is everyone's. Third move, the one that scandalizes modern readers: in manifest and urgent need, taking what is required for survival is not theft. Theft requires taking what another still has a right to. But in extreme necessity, the goods revert to their original common destination. Legal title dissolves where survival is at stake. Note what this is not. Aquinas is not a communist. He defends private property as prudent and necessary. But he refuses to absolutize it. The medieval doctor would say the modern instinct, that property rights override a dying man's need, is not capitalism. It is a theological error about who the earth actually belongs to. Which conviction do you actually hold when push comes to shove: absolute ownership, or Aquinas's stewardship?

The interior of the Notre-Dame Basilica in Montreal, Canada, during the "Aura" light and sound show. 🇨🇦 The colorful purple and amber illumination on the columns and altar is characteristic of the immersive Aura multimedia experience held inside the basilica.

Probably the principle reason today's feminist philosophers do not read/cite Beauvoir.

TORONTO (CCN) — Before being a writer or a broadcaster, a journalists “must be human first,” said Diaa Ostaz, a reporter in Gaza for ABC News and ONE Magazine, the publication of Catholic Near East Welfare Association. canadiancatholicnews.ca/we-a…

If you're interested in #transhumanism and #theology, I recommend my recent interview with @adamriggio: youtube.com/watch?v=uVNpxKLr…. (Don't mind the clickbait title!) The premise for our discussion is this book: link.springer.com/book/10.10…. @micahtredding should take a look.

Ha!