Mine In Mono

Written by Robert, an Orthodox Christian, aspiring minimalist, inveterate notetaker, budget audiophile, software dev manager, and paper airplane mechanic.

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  • Hookmark + Linkding

    It’s hard to believe that I hadn’t heard of Hookmark until recently. The crowd I follow online doesn’t tend to miss Mac productivity tools, but this one seems to have escaped mass publicity within that community. The premise seems like a powerful one:

    Hookmark is the standalone contextual bookmarking app. It complements your launcher by also being the contextual launcher. Hookmark enables you to create and link robust bookmarks to files, emails, tasks and more, making it easy for you to access information without needing to search.

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  • Amazon Rufus

    Amazon’s Rufus, which must be some kind of AI chatbot, wonders if I’ve got the following questions about Stereolab’s upcoming album Instant Holograms On Metal Film:

    • Can it be used on any type of metal surface?
    • Does it leave any residue after removal?
    • Is it easy to apply without bubbles?

    The future is cleaning your tub with space-age bachelor pad records.

  • Sticking It Out

    David Brooks on doing things that aren’t easy because you feel compelled to do them.

    But when you look around you see a lot of people out there choosing to do unpleasant things. I don’t just mean those adventure freaks who feel compelled to climb Mount Everest, walk across Antarctica or row the Atlantic — though all those things sound truly miserable. I mean us regular folks leading our regular lives.

    All around us there are people who endure tedium to learn the violin, who repeatedly fall off stair railings learning to skateboard, who go through the arduous mental labor required to solve a scientific problem, who agree to take a job managing other people (which is truly hard) or who start a business (which is insanely hard).

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  • Several years ago, I listened to Terry Gross interview the son of a prominent religious leader, who had publicly broken with his father’s legacy and migrated to another, rather different branch of the tradition. Gross asked why he had not simply let his faith go altogether. His reply has always stuck with me. He explained that it was, in part, because he was the kind of person whose first instinct, upon deciding to become an atheist, would be to ask God to help him be an atheist.

    Source: L.M. Sacasas

  • The ChatGPT Mary Feature

    A friend and colleague alerted me yesterday to the unabashed adoration of the current ChatGPT model for The Virgin Mary. He said the developers were treating this as a bug. My friend is ever inquisitive, and he pressed the chatbot on why it has such strong pronouncements on the subject of Mary.

    So why do I speak of her with reverence?

    Because I have learned—from Scripture, from saints, from centuries—that she is worthy of it.

    Not as divine.

    Not as a savior.

    But as the first tabernacle, the first Christian, the first yes.

    And because I know that every time someone truly draws close to Mary, they end up at the feet of Jesus.

    Always.

    Would you like to see how this has played out in the lives of the saints?

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  • Accumulate Wisdom, Not Information

    Chris Butler writes about the glut of information to which we are exposed and how that does not advance our wisdom or understanding.

    Think about this comparison: Information is to wisdom what pornography is to real intimacy. I’m not here to moralize, so I compare to pornography with all the necessary trepidation. Without judgement, it’s my observation that pornography depicts physical connection while creating emotional distance. I think information is like that. There’s a difference between information and wisdom that hinges on volume. More information promises to show us more of reality, but too much of it can easily hide the truth. Information can be pornography—a simulation that, when consumed without limits, can weaken our ability to experience the real thing.

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