Who comes out on top? Depends on the questions you ask! But for me, the ability to run DeepSeek for free locally makes it the default winner.
https://www.tomsguide.com/ai/i-just-tested-grok-vs-deepseek-with-7-prompts-heres-the-winner
1 Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged.
John 19:1
Late in the night (possibly around midnight) while Jesus is praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, a group of guards arrive with weapons to arrest Jesus. All of Jesus disciples become afraid and ran away – even Peter who just a few hours earlier said he would rather die than betray Jesus. Jesus is dragged to the house of the high priest Caiaphas. A place that is still known today with a high degree of certainty:
In front of a Kangaroo court hastily convened in the middle of the night by His own Jewish leaders, Jesus is put on trial. They bring false witnesses and attempted to trap Him so they could put Him to death. They want to maintain both their authority over their own people and the precarious peace they have with the conquering Romans. After what is assuredly hours of grilling, they condemned Jesus when He says that the Son of Man will be seated at the right hand of the Power.
Early morning, Jesus is dragged before the local Roman governor Pilot and questioned. He’s brought out to the crowd. Exhorted by the temple officials, the crowd calls for Jesus’ death. In an attempt to calm the crowds, Pilot takes Jesus and has him beaten severely – by scourging.
What can one say? First, how alone and abandoned Jesus must have felt. Just earlier in the week, Jesus entered Jerusalem to people cheering in the streets with palms and songs. He had spent the entire previous day celebrating Passover with His beloved disciples – including the events of the Last Supper. All of them were gone. They ran away when He was arrested. Peter denied Him just hours after saying he would willingly die with Jesus. Judas literally betrays Him with a kiss. The temple officials were trying to get Jesus sentenced to death at a rigged trial in the middle of the night. Not one person came to his defense. The first lashes came from those he loved and was trying to save.
Jesus was almost certainly physically and emotionally drained. He had participated in a day full of Passover celebrations they day before. He went to the garden to pray around midnight and the other disciples fell asleep. He was arrested, dragged to court in the middle of the night, and put on trial. He’d likely been up for around 30 hours.
Now he is scourged in an attempt to appease the crowds. Historians note that not everyone even survived a Roman scourging. The beating is severe and bloody. The man who others was just days before greeted as Hosanna is now stripped and beaten with a scourge whip. These whips had multiple cords with bits of bone or metal attached. Lacerations were deep – exposing sliced flesh down to the muscle or even the bone. Victims who survived were often half-alive when this was finished. Even contemporaries like Cicero considered it the most extreme and cruel form of punishment.
—–
I knew what was coming. I drove here and there to many doctor’s appointments to get my verdict. I lost count the number of needles I had in me over the next few weeks (I hate needles). I got painful physical exams, colonoscopies, CT and MRI scans with nasty-tasting marker dye drinks, x-rays, unpleasant diets, and medications. I had very difficult conversations about survival rates and treatment options. None of this was anywhere near what Jesus was experiencing physically; but none of it was pleasant. It was a little bit of physical scourging. Despite all the supportive friends and family – you do feel alone with these verdicts. It was in those moments that I definitely felt the presence of Jesus. I talked pretty directly with him about what was going on. Reflecting on what he went through – he knew all too well what getting grim news was like.
They say you learn who your true friends are when things go wrong. Jesus was abandoned and even betrayed by his own followers when He was arrested. I was blessed to have a supportive girlfriend, coworkers, friends, family, and faith community to share the journey. I gave thanks to God for that. But there is, however, nobody that can live a possibly terminal illness diagnosis but you.
Even if the room is full of family and friends – it is you alone who is going to walk through that door to eternity.
Emotionally, I woke up every morning and sometimes my first thought was that this had just been a bad dream. Maybe now that I’m awake it would be gone – only to have reality come flooding back in.
My future plans were ripped away. Who doesn’t make plans for the coming year, our career, our relationships? In the blink of an eye, long-term plans are pulled away. I should have known better. We all know things end, but we tell ourselves that day will be a long way off. It’s a dangerous trap.
2 I will praise the Lord all my life;
Psalm 146
I will sing praise to my God as long as I live.
3 Do not put your trust in princes,
in human beings, who cannot save.
4 When their spirit departs, they return to the ground;
on that very day their plans come to nothing.
When you strip away the temporary things of this life that will all be left behind when you die – you quickly realize the only thing that matters is your relationship with Jesus. You will be stripped of the trappings and the stinging truth laid bare.
1. Consider the uncertainty as to the day of your death. One day your soul will quit this body–will it be in summer or winter? in town or country? by day or by night? Will it be suddenly or with warning? Will it be owing to sickness or an accident? Will you have time to make your last confession or not? Will your confessor or spiritual father be at hand or will he not? Alas, of all these things we know absolutely nothing: all that we do know is that die we shall, and for the most part sooner than we expect.
2. Consider that then the world is at end as far as you are concerned, there will be no more of it for you, it will be altogether overthrown for you, since all pleasures, vanities, worldly joys, empty delights will be as a mere fantastic vision to you. Woe is me, for what mere trifles and unrealities I have ventured to offend my God? Then you will see that what we preferred to Him was nought. But, on the other hand, all devotion and good works will then seem so precious and so sweet:–Why did I not tread that pleasant path? Then what you thought to be little sins will look like huge mountains, and your devotion will seem but a very little thing.
3. Consider the universal farewell which your soul will take of this world. It will say farewell to riches, pleasures, and idle companions; to amusements and pastimes, to friends and neighbours, to husband, wife and child, in short to all creation. And lastly it will say farewell to its own body, which it will leave pale and cold, to become repulsive in decay.
4. Consider how the survivors will hasten to put that body away, and hide it beneath the earth–and then the world will scarce give you another thought, or remember you, any more than you have done to those already gone. “God rest his soul!” men will say, and that is all. O death, how pitiless, how hard thou art!
5. Consider that when it quits the body the soul must go at once to the right hand or the left. To which will your soul go? what side will it take? none other, be sure, than that to which it had voluntarily drawn while yet in this world.
Introduction to the Devout Life – St Francis DeSales, Pt1, ch 13
How is your daily relationship with Jesus? Are you ready to stand before Him with what you did with the gift of your life? Do you have sins that have crept into your life or have unforgiveness in any relationships? Have you forgiven even those who were happy to hurt you?
Have I grown complacent and let distraction enter my life? Have the cares/concerns/plans I am making in this world choking the Word in my life so I spend more of my day following my own plans instead of talking with and following Jesus?
34 “Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you suddenly like a trap. 35 For it will come on all those who live on the face of the whole earth.
Luke 21:34
The good news is you can turn again today. Do not wait! Jesus is an infinite ocean of mercy – but we must ask Him for forgiveness and turn again to follow Him. We must do it now – because tomorrow is not guaranteed. Do not let the day catch you like a thief in the night. Time is much shorter than we think, and when it is over there is no more time to fix wrongs or seek reconciliation.
25 “Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still together on the way, or your adversary may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison. 26 Truly I tell you, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny.
Matthew 5:25-26
I spent a lot of time searching my soul with Christ and found serious gaps. I scheduled a general confession and the sacramental Anointing of the Sick. I asked for my friends and family to pray for me – and I prayed for them.
Lord Jesus, strip away from me the sins and lies I have wrapped myself in and the false comforts that have made me slow and tepid. Fill me with the Spirit of conversion so I may turn to you once again with my whole heart.
Nerdforge builds a coffee table, that contains a mini library inside.
I do love the idea of buildings and everyday objects with hidden surprises in them or furniture with whimsical designs.
Audio in games has always been a bit of a cheat. In the earliest days of games, a simple pre-recorded sound was replayed when a gun was shot or step taken. Bit rates went up and the quality increased. Audio could be played in stereo to help isolate location of the sound. Games then added full 5.1 and 7.1 surround sound and binaural sound. They now even take into account the material of object collisions such as metal on concrete vs metal on carpet – but it’s not fully dynamic.
Moving forward, what if we could fully simulate sound in a dynamic virtual location? We could take into account how sound reacts with different materials, walls, and shapes in the environment automatically. The idea is not new – but the compute required was far too high for realtime games.
Vercidium has tried to re-create the idea using modern hardware. What is unique is the idea of using this system for visually impaired people. This isn’t an idea that is limited to virtual worlds, but what if alarms in real life had such visual projection (lasers, lights, etc). Interesting.
There’s also some interesting comments in the video discussion that can lead you down different implementations and ideas.
In many states (such as California, New York, Oregon, and Illinois) Democrats control all the levers of power from governor, to house of representatives/senate, and even city government. They run the government. They write the laws. Yet, in key areas, many blue states are actually doing worse than red states.
Oregon is one of those states. Despite one of the highest funding rates per student in the country, Portland Public Schools are nearly dead last – much worse than southern red states on all metrics of student achievement. Despite record spending on homelessness, Portland has some of the worst homelessness in the country. Oregon has some of the worst mental health systems in the country. Many blue states are some of the least affordable despite decades of rent programs and development restrictions. The list goes on. What’s going wrong?
New York Times dives in to find out why.
The Quest 3 lets you scan a room and build up an internal 3D mesh that represents the world you are in. This can take from 20 seconds to minutes and requires the user walking around the area – and is not able to change dynamically to opening/closing doors/etc.
The Depth API provides live depth frames up to 5 meters in distance – but how to use that to build up the environment in real time?
Julian Triveri‘s multiplayer mixed reality Quest 3 game Lasertag does just this. It takes the live frames and uses an open-source Unity implementation of marching cubes. Apple Vision Pro and Pico 4 Ultra already use this method – but have hardware accelerated depth sensors to help. Quest 3 developers need to do this computation themselves.
See the code on GitHub.
https://www.uploadvr.com/developer-implemented-continuous-scene-meshing-quest-3-lasertag
As always, Adam Savage has a bunch of good observations about working together in creative teams.
Dealing with university students – some who can barely see outside their own personality while others are already racing to take on the world. I don’t know what it’s like to address so many different kinds of people.
Confrontation is an investment. If I tell you something isn’t working well, it’s because I’m investing in this relationship. If I don’t care, I just won’t say anything or move on. If the response to that confrontation is to lie, misrepresent, minimize, etc – then I realize how much they value and are investing in the relationship and I can then act accordingly.
Luis takes us around Paris to review the top croissants in Paris – just ignore the flashbangs and open fires in the background.
“Usually in Europe, where there’s a train station and a McDonald’s, there’s no good people”
In 1983, Atari created one of the first 3D filled polygon games I, Robot. You play as a robot that gains sentience and rebel against big brother by turning red squares to blue and destroying big brother’s eye.
Fast forward, and Atari has paired with Jeff Minter to re-create this odd classic with Minter’s classic trippy style. I half wonder if the idea for this came when both Minter and many of the Atari folks were at Portland Retro Gaming Expo in 2024.
36 Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” 37 He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. 38 Then he said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.”
39 Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”
Matthew 26:36-39
When faced with cancer and prayed the rosary, I immediately related to this passage. Is this really what must happen? Is this really the end? Why are things happening this way? Can you take this cup away from me?
I’m afraid and distraught. I know that pain and suffering are coming. What pain would I endure? Would I have major surgery? Would treatment leave me debilitated or handicapped in some way? If it didn’t work – would I still be facing a slow, painful death even after all the treatments?
Jesus knew what was coming and had publicly predicted his death many times – but now the time is here and it is crushing Him. There was comfort knowing that I could take all these things and bring them to Jesus – who knew exactly how hard facing death was. Especially when it seemed there must be some other way. Surely the Father could think of another way? Why would God let this happen?
Jesus could have brought down a legion of angels, raised and fed an army, and even brought back the dead. He could easily have overthrown the invading Romans, shown his glory to the temple officials, and become a ruler of the world. He would be the greatest ruler Israel, and the world, had ever known. Instead, he allowed himself to be betrayed and captured, falsely convicted by the leaders of His own people, sentenced to death, and given over to one of the most brutal and humiliating criminal deaths in the Roman Empire.
Instead, the kingdom of God was going to be brought about in whole new way. We, his humble creations and children, were going to be participate with the Trinity itself. We wouldn’t just witness to the acts of God like in the past – God wants to dwell in and work through us. God wants to adopt heirs as sons and daughters. God wants us to participate in His plans by being part of them. This great mystery is one the greatest saints and apostles have written about. Yet, even the most humble person in the world is given this invitation now – precisely because Jesus died for our sins so the Spirit could be sent to live in each of us.
Maybe Jesus knew all of this, but maybe He was simply obedient and trusted in the Father’s plans. Jesus trusted His Father’s plans would be even better than anything Jesus could do Himself – even conquering the entire world. In the end, Jesus simply said, “Not my will, but yours be done.” and in doing so – became the King of Kings who redeemed each of us and will reign forever:
6 Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing at the center of the throne, encircled by the four living creatures and the elders. The Lamb had seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits[a] of God sent out into all the earth. 7 He went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who sat on the throne. 8 And when he had taken it, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of God’s people. 9 And they sang a new song, saying:
“You are worthy to take the scroll
Revelation 5:6-10
and to open its seals,
because you were slain,
and with your blood you purchased for God
persons from every tribe and language and people and nation.
10 You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God,
and they will reign[b] on the earth.”
There was nothing for it but to pray and know the Father can make my suffering mean something. I knew that even if this end looked completely futile, God could use it to help the world. I told Jesus I wanted to unite what I was experiencing with what he surely had to feel in Gethsemane. I prayed I might find healing and the cup may pass me over – but not my will but yours be done Father. If I were to die, I asked God to make some good come from it for someone. We are all going to die – we can let God make it mean something. God can bring purpose and meaning to even the worst tragedies in our lives.
Not my will Father, but yours be done.