Gaaaaaaaah this is soooooooooooooo cooooooooooool

I agree that too many big AI execs seem to primarily view humanity as a competing product, not as, you know, humans

I care about this from 3 angles: theological accuracy; the Church—ie me & my fellow Catholics—have a responsibility for him; and you don’t get to kick people out of the Church because you don’t like them & judge them to be choosing evil. Even when that judgment is correct!

What’s beautiful and fraught about Catholicism is that, for all its passion for doctrine, the primary elements that establish the core relationship among Catholics are the sacraments and laws (canon law), not ideology as such. It’s a way of saying that God is the primary organizer of relationships.

That a genocide is being committed, supported, defended, denied, and justified by a lot of individual people because they learned the wrong lesson from one specific other earlier genocide is a very grim thing to consider, and a reminder that things can be more complicated than just "never forget".

A six panel grid from Action Comics #1. Superman stops a man from beating his wife with a belt. He throws the man against the wall; the man then tries to stab Superman. The knife breaks and the coward faints.

Happy Superman Day.

Golden Age Superman was a New Deal hero and a champion of the poor and oppressed.

Never forget that Superman’s earliest enemies included: slumlords, crooked businessmen, corrupt politicians, mining tycoons, gangsters, and abusers.

(Action Comics #1)

the strait of hormuz is neither opened nor closed, but a secret third thing

Trump entered politics in 2015 offering far-right Christians a deal: "Christianity is under tremendous siege. If I'm there, you're going to have plenty of power."

He's kept his end of the bargain. All he asks is absolute, worshipful obedience in return.

Trump hates Pope Leo because he sees himself as the real vicar of Christ The president is trying to rebuild Christianity in his own image, but the first American pope is standing in the way

Pope Leo XIV — the first American pope — commands the loyalty of 60 million U.S. Catholics and refuses to submit.

He cannot be praised into silence or ignored into irrelevance. So he must be attacked. Trump doesn't see Leo as a religious leader — he sees him as an illegitimate rival.

Vance and others want to make this about whether they’re there can be a just war or not. But Leo grants that point: a defensive war, yes. The pope instead is making this about the glorification of war and violence and a spirit of domination that fuels all of that...

Power is power. The Pope is unique in that he doesn’t have an army, but he has the power of having one.

Surprised Trump hasn't demanded a Pulitzer for his "poems."

I'd probably break down and buy one of those fridges rather than rely on Curly, Larry and Moe.

I suspect the Pope sounds "woke" to many Christian conservatives because the US is steeped in prosperity theology, where the point of worship is to deliver health and wealth to believers. Thus, "feed the hungry" and "show mercy for the poor" sounds needlessly political and "woke."

Guys the Catholic Church’s actual superpower against Trump and Vance is it has way more problems and people than the US. Literally the pope is worried about MANY wars. The pope is not on Bluesky obsessing. He’s busy. With the entire world.

Love that Neal Adams art. RIP

Alan Davis was the artist on the original Captain Britain series where Betsy first appeared. It was always a treat when he'd do the occasional X-Men issue.

It was dumb as hell to send any American to campaign for Orban. You not only encourage your opponents, you discourage you own people. What nationalist party worth a damn thinks it needs a lift from someone outside the border?

In Avengers 102 - 04 from the early 70s, the Sentinels capture the Scarlet Witch to use her powers to create a giant solar flare to sterilize all humans and thus prevent any more mutants from being born. Problem solved!

Nobody said to Lazarus alive after being dead: “My Lord and my God”. The resurrection of Christ is of different order, and the faith of Thomas is a move beyond what his eyes saw. His seeing, like ours, is sacramental, and requires the Spirit’s light of understanding.

I don't know anything but this reads to me as "countries were getting ready to just pay the tolls and it got through his skull that that's an obvious loss"

I like to think they sound like the Daleks from Dr. Who. Kind of similar. Goofy-looking robot things from the 60s that have had amazing staying power.

All the great powers and civilizations that conventional history holds up as the paradigms and apogee of human progress, the stuff of big-H history, they're all cut down to size, their rulers and armies are forgotten, reduced to walk-ons in the history of salvation

Ok on a serious note, it cannot be exaggerated how bad formalized Iranian control of the Strait is for the world. The entire global economy rests on an American guarantee of free commercial shipping. That guarantee is gone. We don’t know exactly what will happen but none of it will be good.

A very uncomfortable truth.

Congrats!

The other thing the Iran war demonstrates, and it is in many ways obvious but had been a bit ignored in the (justified) alarm over the proliferation of wars in the past few years, is the difference between wars in load-bearing regions for the global economy and those in the periphery.

Compared to civil wars in Sudan, DRC and Myanmar, where conflict has facilitated efforts by outside actors to pillage mineral resources, the Iran war created existential risk for the global economy.

The speed with which it ended shows that the problem in peacemaking is mainly one of political will.

How can you not like Reed Richards?

A large tapestry in San Bartolomeo all'Isola symbolically depicts the many forms of modern martyrdom.
For example, in the bottom right of the tapestry, a bishop standing at an altar represents St. Oscar Romero.
Pope Francis (who personally knew such martyrs in Argentina) prayed before the tapestry.