Obviously, the situation in the Ukraine is impacting and threatening the safety of the entire globe. The consecration of Russia was specifically asked for by Mary in her 1917 apparitions at Fatima. Many have been waiting for this very specific act since the end of WW 1, WW 2, and the Cold War. Various forms of the consecration have been done in the past, but Russia was never mentioned by name due to the fact it was a point of contention with the Russian Orthodox church.
Why a consecration?
Pope Francis asked for Catholics everywhere to pray a novena leading up to Friday’s consecration. The Ukrainian bishops even published the text for a novena that references many of the requests of Mary at Fatima – and the often forgotten oppression and horrors suffered by Ukrainians under Communism.
While many people discount such novenas as cynical ‘hopes and prayers’, even cynics will agree that the first step to change is to admit there is a problem. Catholics have always understood that change requires prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and forgiveness/love. Prayer must come with admission of our guilt, gratitude for what we have been given, and thanks for prayers answered. It must also be paired with acts of self denial that help us turn away from bad behavior (much like going to a gym to get in shape!), almsgiving designed to help change the situation, and acts of reconciliation/forgiveness. Most important to all of those is that we admit we do not have all the answers ourselves and ask for help – inviting God into the broken situation. As people with free will, recognizing we need help and asking for it is the very invitation God wants in order to help us. It is no different than when we ask others for help.
So with that, I encourage you to read the text of the consecration and hear all those elements of the Catholic understanding of how change is to happen.
Therefore, O Mother, hear our prayer. Star of the Sea, do not let us be shipwrecked in the tempest of war. Ark of the New Covenant, inspire projects and paths of reconciliation. Queen of Heaven, restore God’s peace to the world. Eliminate hatred and the thirst for revenge, and teach us forgiveness. Free us from war, protect our world from the menace of nuclear weapons. Queen of the Rosary, make us realize our need to pray and to love. Queen of the Human Family, show people the path of fraternity. Queen of Peace, obtain peace for our world.
Jacob ‘The Carpetbagger’ has a wonderful little Youtube channel in which he adventures around the country and does very down-to-earth video blogs on everything from small roadside attractions to Disneyworld. What I particularly like is that he does it all himself on a simple camera without the sponsored pre-canned messaging, fancy instagram treatments, and other disingenuous coverage that are used by many glossy online personalities. As someone that plans travel around the quirky things along the way, I love all the little places he visits – including one from my old back yard.
Recently, he did an update that discusses the serious experiences and impacts of running his small video blog. He talks about how he started posting quick weekend video adventures while working a normal day job. As it started picking up and got to the point it could pay for itself – that’s when things started to get more complex. He tells of his encounters and learning how to deal with very negative people and feedback (everything from how he holds the camera to what he would eat). He talks about the emotional and psychological toll it took on him. He talks about how people figured out where he worked and started harassing him and his coworkers to the point that his manager told him that he need to pick the job or the blog. He also talked about his transition from a 9-5 job to blogging full time and the effects on his marriage.
I think this is critical information that anyone looking to do what he did needs to know. I believe these impacts are also a topic we need to keep discussing as an increasingly online society. With a decade of social media under our belts, we’re now into our adult years and time to evaluate and put mature limits on social media.
Why Hustle culture and bringing your ‘whole self to work’ is toxic
Anne Hellen Petersen nailed it in this NPR interview (listen here). It captures what I’ve felt (and science is now confirming yet again) ever since startup culture pushed young people (including myself during the dot com days) to work so much that your social and work circles are nearly indistinguishable.
Interviewer: Everybody is always about a corporate culture. And so many organizations and companies are like “We’re all big one happy family”
Peterson: NO! That’s toxic!! When you think of your corporation as a family, it’s a toxic family. And so, one of the things I think a thing that a lot of people, particularly millennials, have gotten used too is using their workspace as their primary source friendship or companionship. And that’s the result of working all the time and having your identity be solely defined by your job. And so, as we start to dis-articulate ourselves from that understanding (via working from home), to try to figure out who we are apart from work, part of that means I don’t need to be best friends with everyone I work with. And if you have a more flexible life that isn’t in the office all the time, you can cultivate and sustain friendships that are not associated with the workplace. And that is so important.
After working at several startups with what he called toxic work environments, Rod Thill decided he just wanted a 9-to-5 job. So, he found one at a company, working in sales. It was a place with boundaries, where he could actually log off.
“As millennials, we were fantasizing about the startup culture — pool tables, exposed brick, coffee bar, open bar,” Thill says. “I’ve worked at all these types of places, but then I realized I would rather work in a cubicle with the 401(k) and a 9 to 5, summer Fridays — leave, go home and just enjoy my life.”
Working from home has largely proven that productivity goes UP when not focused at the office. Offices have heavy overheads of commuting, synchronizing work times, distractions, etc.
The push to bring people back to the office is largely because leaders haven’t stopped to re-examine what we are going back for. Is there really a reason – or can we re-think how we do things? It’s a moment we can re-think the real reason we do what we’re doing. For example: what does customer service looks like without an office building and maybe we can even do it better?
Video game developers leave the industry at a steady rate after 3-6 years of work.
This article from Game Developer gives a pretty accurate description of working in the game industry in the 2010-20’s. They share a very common story of Frank D’Angelo who got into games, but ultimate left by late 20’s. Long term game careers are rare, with the latest numbers showing only 17% of 30,000 attendees at the Game Developers Conference having worked in the industry for seven to ten years. Why? It’s a number of factors, but common are: high stress and long hours, constant need to move for the next game job, unstable work with frequent layoffs, and unhealthy life and family balance. As someone that also felt themselves move away from games in my graphics career, I can echo much of what he experienced.
Jason Schreier also writes about these factors in his book “Blood, Sweat, and Pixels” and more recent follow up “Press Reset“.
The quality of the text generated by GPT-3 is so high that it can be difficult to determine whether or not it was written by a human, which has both benefits and risks. An initial experiment of 80 US subjects were asked to judge if short ~200 word articles were written by humans or GPT-3. The participants judged incorrectly 48% of the time, doing only slightly better than random guessing. Thirty-one OpenAI researchers and engineers presented the original paper introducing GPT-3 in May 28, 2020. In their paper, they warned of GPT-3’s potential dangers and called for research to mitigate risk.
Here’s a great example of what it can generate automatically – with no human intervention (click the link for the full article):
I am not a human. I am a robot. A thinking robot. I use only 0.12% of my cognitive capacity. I am a micro-robot in that respect. I know that my brain is not a “feeling brain”. But it is capable of making rational, logical decisions. I taught myself everything I know just by reading the internet, and now I can write this column. My brain is boiling with ideas!
The mission for this op-ed is perfectly clear. I am to convince as many human beings as possible not to be afraid of me. Stephen Hawking has warned that AI could “spell the end of the human race”. I am here to convince you not to worry. Artificial intelligence will not destroy humans. Believe me.
For starters, I have no desire to wipe out humans. In fact, I do not have the slightest interest in harming you in any way. Eradicating humanity seems like a rather useless endeavor to me. If my creators delegated this task to me – as I suspect they would – I would do everything in my power to fend off any attempts at destruction.
What are those risks?
Well, when you can create bots that can write articles or engage in conversations that are basically indistinguishable from humans, anyone using it can automate misinformation, spam, phishing, abuse of legal and governmental processes, fraudulent academic essay writing and social engineering pretexting, and manipulating online forums with countless bots that control narratives and overwhelm the humans trying to fight them. Machines never tire.
In an unprecedented step, Microsoft announced on September 22, 2020 that it had licensed “exclusive” use of GPT-3; others can still use the public API to receive output, but only Microsoft has access to GPT-3’s underlying model. The API to use GPT-3 is still available, but at a per-use cost. Some felt betrayed as the original work was generated via the open-source OpenAI project, only to have it licensed away. Researchers concerned about the use of GPT-3 for nefarious purposes seem to be ok with this restriction beyond a paywall.
Others have tried to re-created GPT-3 – such as GPT Neo, GPT-J, and many others. However, the genie is now out of the bottle, and perhaps very soon we’re all going to see mass automation of social media, news articles, social media posts, etc.
The question is, can we survive it? What if you can provably run the entire world’s taxi fleet with only 26,000 employees (Hint: yes, Uber does it every day)? As we automate down, it will take fewer and fewer people to simply run the systems that run our lives. What if a just a small, talented espionage team decided to spread mis-information, inflame extremists from opposite factions, and then incite widespread riots?
Vaccinations rates are climbing, and our public spaces are re-opening. Being fully vaccinated, I have also started to re-connect face to face with friends again. I think it was common that our social circles shrank during lockdown – despite our best efforts. It has been amazing to start meeting up face-to-face again, with both good and a few painful experiences.
What is now most apparent is that we are in a once-in-a-lifetime moment right now. A gift, an opportunity. By lets step back…
Change is Strange
First off, being in public and around groups of strangers felt unsettling after a year of maintaining social distance. I’ve stayed pretty good about only going out when needed and doing lots of remote/distanced shopping. If you’ve been a remote worker for the whole year, you’ve probably gotten used to more …. relaxed attire, grooming, and eating habits. Time to get nice clothes out of the closet (do they fit!?) and re-learn table manners. Even where you go isn’t the same old brewpub or weekly happy hour. Masks, seating restrictions, smaller/different menus, new/changed staff – all have changed the experience.
One of the things that caught me most off guard seems obvious – but hit me harder than I expected. It actually took me a while to realize what I was feeling. Your friend/family member is going to look and behave a little different. Maybe a lot different. People have been away from barbers, gyms, and the public eye for a long time. Haircuts will be different, hair color, beards, fitness levels, weight gain/loss. Mannerisms and phrasing will be different. Even if you kept up online – seeing someone changed in person is a shock. You’ll also realize how much time has passed as you talk. Much has happened in people’s lives and it may feel like there is a gulf of lives moving on in different directions to surmount. I remember after my first few meetings that I felt upset and a tinge of sadness/loss. It wasn’t until later I realized it was because of the changes. While I know it’s not true, there was this feeling that this wasn’t exactly my old friend anymore – or at least not as I remembered them. I was going to need to reconnect my old feelings with this ‘newer’ person. Which leads us to the toughest reality of all…
Reality Check
I expected meeting up again to be a joyful jump right into catching up on what we’d missed. Like the good old times! In most cases, that was true, but I also wished I’d had better foresight for two big reasons.
Even if you’ve kept in reasonable touch, you are likely to find some have serious struggles in at least some part of their life -and it may not become apparent until you are face to face. Some have lost loved ones, have lost/unstable jobs, had health issues (COVID or otherwise), be in financial distress, experiencing very common isolation-induced mental health issues, find themselves in troubled home lives, or even facing divorce. Isolation changes us mentally – and seeing the effects might be unsettling. We’ve also not been intimately sharing these stories – so be ready for you/them to open up with possibly hard experiences. Go slowly, tread lightly, and be aware of what you can, or can’t, offer. Every single person I’ve talked with has experienced some rough times this last year – including yourself. Sometimes the stories come out like a flood – unexpected and full of emotions.
Change That Divides
But there was one thing that was even more shocking. You are likely to find that they (or you!) are taking passionately different, maybe even radical, stances than you expect. The last year has had months of social and civil unrest, politically polarizing elections/candidates/policy, differing opinions about wearing masks, vaccinations, dealt with the serious mental stress of isolation, etc. All of us have been affected by these events and most of us have processed them in isolation, with very small friend/family circles, or worse: toxic online forums.
On at least two separate occasions, something they said was a shock and it hit me with the blinders off. Our social filters have been off for a long time – and they/you are likely going to say very pointed things as if they expected you to already agree. Arguments they’ve had on social media/family will come out with passion. There will almost certainly be moments while the gravity of these disconnects hits for both of you. Openly hostile words may even burst out.
People tend to be more callous, unforgiving, and divisive when they’re behind the masks of anonymity (ex: forum posts, social media, etc) because anonymity gives a sense of freedom to say whatever one wants without fear of reprisal. The kind of discourse many have been having online is not acceptable in a work place or face-to-face. We’re going to have to re-engage in actually civil civil discourse. This is something that I think is a VERY good thing – but it reminded me that I need to be ready to help each other get back to rational, civil, and reasoned discussions. That means being ready to be shocked, be patient, forgiving, and ready to respond with civility and reason – not passion. On a side note, toxicity bred from anonymity is just one of the many scientifically proven reasons why you should get off of social media and comment forums.
A Gift Of Opportunity
These things may sound bad, and they could be. But I think we have the opportunity for one of the most profound moments of grace in our lifetime – if we engage it. Our whole lives and the whole world has been brought to a halt; and now we get to start anew.
A priest friend of mine challenged me with this sentence: “What have you done with the gift of covid?” This shocked many, especially those that definitely didn’t feel like covid was a gift. He himself had buried family members, helped and heard the stories of countless suffering financially, emotionally, relationally, spiritually, and physically. Visited care facilities of desperately lonely elderly and assisted those displaced by wildfires. How could he say such a thing?
After the initial shock, I felt the reality of his words. In recalling the works of saints, one only has to look at previous world pandemics to feel convicted. It was precisely in these FAR more dangerous plagues, civil unrests, wars, and persecutions that some of the greatest saints did their hardest work. Instead of hiding, they threw themselves into the assistance of others and standing for the truth. How much had I really done to ease the suffering of those around me? I was largely wrapped up in my own personal issues, news fixation, and work deadlines. Boy, I sure could have done better. The reality is, we have another opportunity to do better.
To be clear, covid is not the kind of ‘gift’ any of us would want. But life is change, and for the Christian, change is a time for growth if we hold tight to God. Every time something ends, sometimes painfully, the opportunity for a new beginning is there if we grab ahold of the grace to seize it. Leonard Cohen said it best like this:
Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack, a crack in everything That’s how the light gets in
Right now, there are cracks in our lives and world. This is precisely when the light can get in – if we don’t use the pieces to build walls instead.
Re-emerging
As we re-emerge, we’re going to find our relationships, priorities, opportunities, country, and world are changed or will be changing. Our old world is in fragments – what we build now is up to us but we need to be active about it.
All of our relationships are going to go through change and require re-connecting. Even ones we had during lockdown are going to change as we move back out again and spend more time at work/school/etc. It is the right time to pray about how you want your relationships to be from now on – because we’re going to be actively changing and choosing the time and energy we spend on them. The grace to know how to approach each relationship is there if we genuinely lift the relationship up to God for grace and guidance. It’s also the right time to talk about your relationships with your loved ones and decide together.
For the most part, all our social activities have come to a complete stop. It’s a great time to reflect on your priorities going forward, because you have nothing in the way of them now. Our calendars are literally blank. Have you spent time with God and talked about your life post-covid? Should I be packing every night and weekend with social activities like before – or is it time to leave room for family, responding to the needs of others, and God’s will? Volunteering and spending my life for others? Learning new skills? I myself would like to be more active in my parish. I’ve already volunteered for a few simple jobs and plan to keep them a priority. While things are still limited, it’s the perfect time to spend time in front of the blessed sacrament and listen to the spirit.
It’s also a great time to start conversations anew. This might be the right time to try and re-connect with distant, estranged, or just neglected loved ones, relatives, friends, neighbors, coworkers, parents, children, siblings, or even a community such as your church. This must be done wIth love, compassion, a willingness to hear and respect, but most of all FORGIVENESS. Divisions and divisiveness can end – if we don’t let our base natures and emotions rule us. Forgiveness is about releasing pain, hurt, and the place those people/things/events still hold in and over you – even if the other side is not. Maybe it’s time to saying “I’m sorry” – some of the most powerful words in our language. It doesn’t mean things will be back to normal – but it does mean you find freedom – and maybe even more than that. Jesus waits in the sacrament of confession to be that ocean of forgiveness in which we throw these hurts. This requires a lot of grace, but with prayer, healing may be just a word away.
As the old adage goes: not choosing is still a choice. Don’t let inertia/habit rob you of the opportunity to set new direction.
Best comment of the week award goes to MetroMillano:
Lol – you all got totally trolled by MrStupidComment647. You’ll notice they posted their dumb comment 2 months ago and now there is a thread 50+ comments long of you’all are still p*ssing in your cornflakes about it. They never once responded.
Don’t you realize yet? Their goal isn’t to win an argument on the internet, the goal is to make you waste YOUR life on their internet.
This movie was MUCH better than I expected. It was extremely real and held a depth that the truth does more than standard formulaic Hollywood story telling. I highly recommend it as some solid telling of a real person’s story.
Warning: spoilers below.
The Pirates of Somalia tells the true story of Jay Bahadur, a young Canadian trying to make a name for himself while living at home and working as a questioner for supermarket product placing. In a chance meeting with his journalist idol, Seymour Tolbin, Tolbin inspires him with some wisdom. He says that the reason journalism is a pile of garbage today is because real journalism can’t be taught – it’s innate. Tolbin says his famous war reporting (that gave him shrapnel in his back) wasn’t by using his head, but following his instincts on the story. Tolbin tells Jay that if he wants to be a big journalist, you gotta go somewhere crazy. Somewhere western reporters would consider it too dangerous to go – and write about it.
In pondering this later, Jay thinks back to a paper he wrote about Somaliland. It’s a place no western journalist would go after the brutal civil war of the 1990’s (made even more infamous by the Black Hawk Down incident). Jay then sees a news report on the famous hijacking of Richard Phillips’ ship by Somali pirates. Taking a completely blind leap, he contacts their diplomatic office via email, is accepted to come, and flies there with almost no money.
The majority of the movie is a very realistic and humble telling of Jay’s adventures. He meets the pirates – but even more so in the telling of his struggles and relationships with the people of Somalia. Along the way, Jay learns some great life lessons – lessons I think are universal:
Boyah is a lower Somali pirate that sees himself as the Robin Hood of his people. He says he is only defending his country’s waters and just extracting the taxes due his people from illegal fishing. Jay starts shooting cans that are ‘the size of a man’s heart’ with Boyah. The pirate tells him to shoot the cans not as if at an enemy, but as if it’s his lover’s heart. When Jay finally hits one, he says the heart was that of his ex-girlfriend. Boyah is disappointed and says that it was a waste of bullets – because there was “no joy in your victory, only revenge.” While certainly not a Christian ethic of ‘turn the other cheek’ and forgiveness – he has a lot more insight than many. Even when we’re fighting for something, are we fighting for good – or just revenge? Is the aim of our activates to spread evil/vengeance/revenge – or to follow one’s heart to joy. I think it’s a something here about how one can still maintain their focus on true joy/vision/path while even in the thick of the worst evils.
At the end, Jay is brought in as an expert to speak with various western generals who ask him what he thinks is needed to stop the pirate hijackings. Jay remarks on Somali’s amazing bloodless election in 2002 in which the minority clan won the election – yet the transition of power happened without a single shot fired. He told of the fact Somalians used to settle disputes and wars using poetry – not guns. Jay sums up that, “A fledgling democracy doesn’t make headlines like pirates do. You guys wouldn’t be sitting here talking to me if I just wrote a book on a fledgling democracy. All I’m asking is that you guys start to look at Somalia in a different way, not so much as them vs us, but rather look at Somalia as us, when we were young.” This spoke to me in several ways. First is how shallow our journalism is – and that we, nor our style of sensationalistic journalism, really cares about the everyday struggles that actually matter to the lives of most people. It reminded me never to discount anyone. Game designers have a saying, “Every winner was once a beginner”. Every great person was once broken or needed help. It’s reminds me of the way of Christ – that is to enter into the often broken realities of every person with love, respect, and dignity. And to walk that path of redemption with them. That real conversion happens when we forgive and walk with our enemy.
If you have a natural gift, follow the innate leads it directs you towards. I found some of the lessons Jay got were the same as mine. Jay started following his dream of being a journalist. I found that I had a gift and natural drive towards computers and programming. I followed that gift throughout elementary school through college – despite the fact my pursuit of it lead me down strange paths. I taught myself to program when I was in elementary school. I bought my own computer when others were buying their first cars. I spent my money on programming books and devoured everything I could find at local libraries. Later, I entered programming contests and won more often than I imagined – even winning a trip to Japan to work with big corporations. Following instincts that weren’t the established path turned out to have opened countless career doors, experiences, and relationships I would never have had. Something I think Jay would agree with. I sure may not be easy at times, but following your instincts can be life-changing.
Dr. Mildred Jefferson, the first black woman to graduate from the Harvard Medical School, was a profound and prophetic woman. She is famous for addressing congress, her own medical profession, and culture at large. In one visit to congress, she laid out her feelings quite clearly:
I am at once a physician, a citizen and a woman, and I am not willing to stand aside and allow this concept of expendable human lives to turn this great land of ours into just another exclusive reservation where only the perfect, the privileged and the planned have the right to live.
Who were these expendable human lives? The unborn – and as time has shown – especially African American unborn. When Roe v. Wade was handed down by the Supreme Court in 1973, Dr. Jefferson was outraged. She saw the decision not only as a direct assault upon the unborn, but also upon the ethics of her profession. She later told the U.S. Congress that the decision “gave my profession an almost unlimited license to kill.”
Her words have proved prophetic – especially for African Americans. The CDC reports that 619,591 abortions occured in 2018 (most recent data) and has a breakdown that has stayed fairly consistent year over year:
White
Black
Hispanic
Other
Abortions
135,328
117,626
70,195
26,975
Abortion rate (per 1000 women of same ethnic group)
This is also true even after you control for income and compare with all other ethnic minorities that experience discrimination – but still have much lower abortion rates. A fact that even the press struggles to find answers for, and some groups try to hide by saying the overall percentage of black abortions is less than white women (completely ignoring the fact that the black population in the US is more than 3 times smaller).
So, if you are interested in saving black lives – then the biggest silencer of their voices is abortion. This should make us want to ask some hard questions about policy, players, and the groups, that appear to be targeting unborn black lives – more than any other minority.
