Dan Harper

@mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io Thank you so much for this thread.

I just left Silicon Valley after 13 years there, in a job where I did some work on homelessness. & there's more re: homelessness and racism—like Prop 13 (originally a racist law BTW). White people won't fight it even though it makes *their* housing unaffordable

& there's more re: education—like the fight to kill CCSF, a formerly free college that moved lots of lower class POC into middle class

If anything SF racism is worse than presented here

I cannot recommend this book highly enough — _The Future Is Disabled: Prophecies, Love Notes, and Mourning Songs_ by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2022). First, solid info on disability justice, esp. queer/BIPOC. Second, the author points out that in a post-pandemic age of climate disaster, disability is becoming the norm. (N.B.: the CDC already says 26% of US population is disabled.) Finally, it's well written & a joy to read.

I wear surgical masks everywhere. I avoid high and moderate risk activities. And I got COVID this week. Probably at the grocery store.

Thank goodness I'm fully vaccinated & boosted. Otherwise I can see how this could have put me in the hospital.

My worst symptoms were gone in 4 days. But it left me weakened. I don't want to get it again.

So I'm going back to wearing N95 masks. And you know what, grocery delivery is pretty reasonably priced, when you consider the alternative....

@Wells@mastodon.social @jordinn@zirk.us @McPatrick@mastodon.social Sorry Scott, family stuff, so I'm late to this conversation.

My immediate response to "where has the conversation gone" is — COVID. For 2 years years, I was in survival mode. And it's still not over.

My personal response is more complicated. I've been digging deep into Universalism. How do I reconcile Universalism with other traditions that have shaped me, such as American pragmatism, Marxism, and existentialism? For that, I really have to go outside UUism...

1/2

@Wells@mastodon.social Personally, I've been engaging with the American pragmatist concept of fallibilism — a topic that has become pressing with claims and counter claims of relativism in US politics — and how fallibilism applies to Universalism. So...claims to ultimate truth, and how those claims can become modified in a community of inquirers.

Sorry, not being very coherent. My partner's father has pancreatic cancer, and...it's complicated. So, more about this when I have a little more bandwidth.

@Wells@mastodon.social The geek in me requires me to say... I looked it up, and the mean height for US men is approx 70 in with a standard deviation of 3 inches. So at 76.75 in, I'm actually 2 standard deviations from the norm :)

@Wells@mastodon.social That might be a good idea. Actually, one of the few Zoom meetings I could stand would be a Zoom study group on Universalism. There is such a diversity within Universalism, I'd love to hear what others are thinking about.

The Great Hall in Union Station, Chicago, Illinois US. A very peaceful place. I arrived on the Lake Shore Limited at 10 a.m., and got to wait here for two and a half hours before my train to Milwaukee left. It was very pleasant. As a bonus, my carbon footprint on this trip is way, way lower than if I flew (it's also somewhat lower than if I drove). And while the airlines and TSA treat you as semi-sentient baggage, Amtrak employees treat you like an actual human being.

@Wells@mastodon.social Got distracted by long-distance family stuff. Meant to add that I'd be interested in hearing more where Universalist Christianity is these days. In light of advances in Biblical scholarship, in light of colonialism & religion, in light of Pentecostal & Quaker Universalisms, in light of pending ecological disaster, and on and on...all the things that are engaging progressive Christianity, how are Universalist Christians engaging them from a specifically Universalist perspective?

@Wells@mastodon.social I actually enjoy Zoom worship. Yes I prefer face-to-face worship, but I'm still COVID scared so Zoom worship is a nice addition to my local congregation. I"ll have to check out the UK worship.

@BrentToderian@mastodon.online "Fewer cars and less driving, not 'better'cars." — to which I'd add, I'd like to take the money used in developing self-driving cars and invest it in expanding public transit instead.

My usual music fix is choral singing, but - COVID. So I picked up the ukulele again. Which means I'm listening to a lot of uke music. The cool thing about uke music is that it's truly international. Recently I've been listening to Thai uke player Singto Numchok. Check out this video of Singto along with 4 other fabulous uke players. Wow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-KXeSBT4uc

@dijiwan@gardenstate.social I've actually met Anthony Pinn, and admire his work. My point is that the Guardian oversimplified what should be a complex story. This is typical of news media when writing about religion. Religion News Service is one of the few news outlets offering solid religion news reporting right now. Aside from that, you're probably better off diving into research from sociologists, religious studies scholars, and the like.

@dijiwan@gardenstate.social Mm, not the best article on this topic that I've seen. Missing, for example, is that decline in organized religion in the U.S. can also be understood as just one aspect of a larger decline in institutions in general; people are leaving voluntary associations of all kinds. Also missing is some interesting research on how religion is taking on new forms, e.g., in some industries work looks very much like religion (see sociologist Carolyn Chen's book _Word Pray Code_). 1/2

@samir@mastodon.functional.computer Ah yes, I remember this from living in Silicon Valley for 13 years. Criticize a tech company, you get mansplained by the tech fanboyz.

@LadyDragonfly@universeodon.com
British folk: The world is fucked, oh well
Scottish folk: The world is fucked because of the Brits
USan folk: This world is fucked, here's hoping for heaven
Ewan McColl: The world is fucked so much worse than you ever imagined and I'm going to tell you about it in gory detail

@posiputt@mastodon.art There's the famous story of sculptor David Smith taking out advertisements in art magazines repudiating one of this sculptures, because the person who bought it repainted it. Morally, the artist should have full control over the artwork and any reproductions of it.

However, copyright laws are not always moral. You probably want legal advice....