mastodon 4.7.3Quaker Theologian and academic at Guilford College. Interested in finding ways to use and resist with nuance the technologies impacting our lives. Love #coffee #sketchnotes #stationary #reading #gravelbikes #silence
I know most of you are not near where we live in NC but still this is fun.
My coffee company, Fireeweed Coffee Co, is participating in an Anti-Fascist Bake sale today where we’re raising money for some great organizations and building community while doing it.
I’ll be bringing out the espresso machine and serving up some “wesspresso” as well. 😉
I will donate 30% of proceeds to the orgs for any orders placed today online today:
FYI - Been going through and finding where I can shut AI off in apps that are force-feeding it. I believe that AI should be used with consent first.
I'll post things here as I find them:
Day 1 - new students arrive today at Guilford College for our Quaker Leadership program. Excited to meet them and get things rolling. Wish I had 4 more weeks of preparation.
My Pendle Hill Pamphlet released last week. Here’s the post with links for anyone interested in learning more or participating in the zoom discussion next Monday evening.
https://www.gatheringinlight.com/god-bless-the-grass-pendle-hill-pamphlet-published/
Such a fun video.
I love the Life Noble notebook so much. Stopped using my Baron Figs after 15+ years after using one of these once. The paper is amazing.
"Attention isn’t a single faculty that switches on when we ask it to. It’s a set of layered systems that mature on different timelines. The voluntary, top-down layer — the one that allows an adult to peel himself away from the television to write an essay about attention itself, as I’m doing now — is the one that develops last. That’s why ten-year-olds like Oliver aren’t ready for the barrage of stimuli a smartphone puts in front of them..."
https://walledgardenedu.substack.com/p/too-much-too-soon?r=ryjpk&utm_medium=ios
Has clicking "remember device" ever led to your device not being instantly forgotten?
Saw Bill Callahan last night at the Haw River Ballroom. He called the audience “delightful” but really he was the one who was delightful. The music was great and way more rock n roll than I expected. Legendary drummer Jim White really took the entire show up a few notches.
A few new analog tools for the collection.
Two .5 energels which are my favorite for gel pens. Got two new versions (to me) to try: an orange needle tip and a Clena.
Then I decided to get the Pentel Mutli 8 after listening to the recent @penaddict@mastodon.social and deciding to add some colored pencils to my set which I intend to use mostly for illustrations.
Love that this set came with a sharpen and a load of extra led.
#Pentel FTW this time around.
Playing around with @tg@indieweb.social app: Source Feed. https://www.sourcefeed.app/feed/nurselognotes
He describes it as: A "small tool for publishing, reading, and moving through the web without pretending the web needs to become a platform again."
I think I may have come up w an ethical use of AI.
A certain fundamentalist Christian group prominent in the news is trying to create a chapter at our (Quaker) college.
They have a form for interested students to fill out. I heard from my students they’re spamming the form with silliness.
How about a bot that fills out the the form every minute with punny names like Seymour Butts, etc. or maybe all of Gavin Newsome’s names for DT. Just totally jam that form full and make it useless. 😂😈
"Subjects were willing to accept faulty AI reasoning a whopping 73.2 percent of the time, while only overruling it 19.7 percent of the time…fluent, confident outputs are treated as epistemically authoritative, lowering the threshold for scrutiny."
https://productpicnic.beehiiv.com/p/ai-mandates-are-a-demand-for-cognitive-surrender
Okay. In a bookstore overheard a child say she was going to finance camp this summer. I was sure I miss heard until she repeated herself. Couldn’t have been more than 7-8 yrs old.
What’s happening?
Just had breakfast with the new Executive Director of Quaker Voluntary Service (A Service Year Program for folks in their twenties). I enjoyed meeting Greg finally and hearing a bit about how he envisions the program growing. It's a great program if you know anyone who might be interested in it next year (typically folks join right after college for that transition year).
@macsparky@mastodon.social Any chance you got a van and are in Greensboro right now?
Here’s a result of some of the favorite browsers of the #fediverse:
Honorable mention browsers not originally included but mentioned in comments are below. Being on the list is the first vote, additional votes added passed that. So for instance, Vivaldi was mentioned 11 times but shows 10 extra votes passed its mention. How confusing is that?
—
Vivaldi - 10
Librefox - 3
Waterfox - 2
Brave - 1
Zen
Orion
Gnome
Perplexity
Atlas
DuckDuckGo
Servo
Feel free to add to this list below.
Do any of you have a favorite comic books podcast? I’d like to hear about what is good and new coming out. I have a few I’ve really been enjoying and don’t really know how to find out new stuff.
Linkding Bookmarking App: https://wessdaniels.micro.blog/2026/05/14/linkding-bookmarking-app.html
Here goes nothing.
This is my first try at writing speculative-fiction. I've. been working on this for about three months and am ready to share it. Be kind!
What Canst Thou Prompt? - A Short Story
A short-story of speculative fiction about an AI-bot and what happens when it goes to a Quaker meeting.
Here’s a really rad Quaker project run by Guilford College alum, Jon Watts that is looking to hire. You don't have to be Quaker for but certainly inline with the general Quaker vibe:
We Are Seeking a Video Producer to Run Our Quaker Youtube/Tiktok Channels (FT Remote Position)
https://theequaker.org/seeking-video-producer-quaker-youtube-channel/
Happy Broken Social Scene new album release day!
The end of the semester is kicking my a$$. All good stuff, including a really beautiful Lavender graduation last night, but I am really excited for the nap right after commencement next week Saturday.
Anyone figure out how to turn off the OpenAI stuff in the new version of Apple's Keynote?
West Hills Friends Meeting, in Portland, Oregon, is looking for a full-time Released Minister to support the spiritual life and ministries of their meeting.
For more information - https://westhillsfriends.org/released-minister
👋 👋 👋
Just checking in. I’ve been traveling for Quaker work and haven’t been able to post much.
What have I missed and how y’all doing?
Hey all, I’m looking for a web-based bookmark manager, preferably web-based for syncing and sharing but wouldn’t mind an app to go along with it.
I want something really simple and built to last like to use, allows for tagging and saving articles, and would be nice if it’s federated or open-source.
[Would like to know if it has AI and whether it can be turned off or not.]
Got any suggestions?
I know sharing posts from substack is an iffy thing here but this is a really great post on the recent hack of Canvas and the negative impact of "educational technology" on learning, especially at the college level. Really good stuff here:
Let’s be clear: "educational technology “solutions” were never about delivering a better education. They were about selling hardware and software."
Any idea if the Retro 51 2025 Pen from your shop would work with energel refills? I thought I saw something online that said Retro 51s could be made to work with those refills but seems a little uncertain.
I’m still on my hunt for a good pen that uses that refill. I tried a tactile turn but it wasn’t for me.
Excited for spoke restocking too.
"“It’s making me dumber for sure,” the fintech software developer told me. “It’s like when we got cellphones and stopped remembering phone numbers, but it’s grown to me mentally outsourcing ‘thinking’ in general. I feel my critical thinking and ability to sit and reason about a problem or a design has degraded because the all-knowing-dalai-llama is just a question away from giving me his take. ... ... https://wessdaniels.micro.blog/2026/05/13/its-making-me-dumber-for.html
Energel Refill in an Everday Karas Pen: https://wessdaniels.micro.blog/2026/08/29/energel-refill-in-an-everday.html
