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kristel.bsky.social
Professor: Religion scholar teaching tech ethics, religion, and bioethics at UIC. Former hospital chaplain and ethicist. Memoir in progress on grief, kidneys, and what we owe each other. Per usual, views my own and not that of my employer.
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Nothing about this is a surprise, not even the grim joke that an AI safety institute no longer wants any experts in AI safety

So they don't like the AI summaries? Is this an anti-AI measure?

Shuffling my papers looking for Kant's commentary on The Golden Rule... In other news, Liberty University "educates" a large percentage of chaplains in the country. That was always going to be a problem.

PAXLOVID alert. Went to a pharmacy to pick up a Paxlovid Rx for (for real) a friend. Out-of-pocket cost for one course of treatment was almost $800, discounted from Pfizer's charge of $1500. Medicare subsidy for Paxlovid expired 2 weeks ago, & no one has given thought to how to make it accessible.

Hot take, E and crew want people to reject empathy because it’s so obvious that empathy is not replaceable by statistics (‘AI’) Streamlining the replacement of ppl with a very specific kind of automation. It’s not just to make us hate each other but to make people ‘irrelevant’ & thus disposable.

Just got an email from the Fulbright Association. As of right now, funding has been cut off to 12,500 US citizens currently abroad and and more than 7,400 foreigner scholars and students in the United States

I was a Fulbright Fellow, and the money is just enough to live on. If they simply didn't send it, I would have run out of money in a foreign country and would have had no option to work. Imagine going through a highly competitive 6 month interview process to be abandoned by the government.

The Trump era crackdown on progressive Churches continues. pres-outlook.org/2025/03/pres...

Reminder: we are being trained not to care about other people. It underlines the attacks on migrants, on DEI, on trans youth, on so-called "wokeness." Sure there are legitimate critiques but this is not about critiques. It's about supercharging capitalism's culture of uncare.

Is the press seriously going to cover this story without mentioning that Trump was impeached in his first term for withholding aid to Ukraine to pressure Zelensky into fabricating dirt on Biden to help Trump win in 2020? Seems relevant!

The new “quiet time.”

I don't think we're talking enough about the fact that the pressure to remove DEI from science means women die.

Just a reminder that fascists, authoritarians, dictators of all stripes destroy archives— books, museums, databases, &c— because those things provide windows onto a plurality of other ways we might organize the world. And so preserving, defending, and spreading that knowledge harms those regimes.

ask why stop, my dear colleagues, imaginging that the humanities are a bad ROI (they aren’t; they’re actually quite excellent; also this isn’t the argument if you want to preserve the university at all—coming for one form of knowledge is a gateway to them all) ask who benefits & to what end

On key traits of fascist regimes:

The big takeaway here is that Reuters won this case against the AI company on grounds they violated fair use—the judge found the AI company was guilty because, in using copyrighted works to generate its output, it “meant to compete... by developing a market substitute.” Huge.

Trolling JD Vance's vapid relationship to tradition.

World's richest man ends America's modest aid to the world's poorest people. I'm not a big believer in hell, but willing to make an exception

Great piece!

The debate over whether or not Elon Musk made a Nazi salute last week (and he did) seems a lot less significant than the fact that he is spending today telling a rally of German far-right voters that it is time for them to "move beyond" historical guilt over the Holocaust.

In 2020, we mapped out the danger zones that will close in on Americans over the next 30 years — combining climate data with wildfire projections by US Forest Service researchers. See what changes are in store for your county. By @shaw.al , @abrahm.bsky.social & Jeremy W. Goldsmith

Breaking: Historians demand more permanent jobs or they will allow even *more* history to happen.

Mike Johnson's fake "Jefferson prayer" didn't read like an honest mistake, but a deliberate provocation. He even mocked historians in his intro. I put his stunt into context. Fake history is a linchpin weapon of Christian nationalists. www.salon.com/2025/01/07/w...

Mapping Project 2025 is now beginning Phase II of the project — tracking all of the connections of Project 2025 in the Trump Administration. Details here: fundrazr.com/stories/5Lvrwf

You're telling me that Margo Martindale and Wayne Knight were once partners on a team of character actors who moonlit as private investigators to supplement film/tv income by busting bad guys with their acting skills and this has never been adapted into the longest-running show on NBC?

Exploring Advent in a time of dangerous pregnancies, @kristel.bsky.social reflects on spiritual needs related to the act of creating new life.

New folks here may not be aware: Our family helps support a former foster-kid who is a first generation college student - she is now in her sophomore year, and not only thriving, but extending that support to other first gen students. Please help us keep her in school if you can!

So a reminder: It’s not ‘liberals’ saying Hegseth abuses women. It’s his mom. It’s not ‘liberals’ comparing Trump to Hitler. It’s his vice-president. It’s not ‘liberals’ calling Musk a liar and a racist. It’s his own child. For the record.

Just going to keep posting some calls for papers #AARSBL folks may be interested in: popularcultureandtheology.com/2024/11/01/e...

NEW EPISODE! How the New Testament came to be, & what texts got left out, with @evandeneykel.bsky.social www.politicalphilosophypodcast.com/ncct

I feel like the academic community doesn't talk enough about the tradition of fighting a snake during your thesis defense. Given its importance, we should spend more time on it in grad school. For example: Tactical Snake Fighting 101 should be taught in year 1 of PhD programs. Anyone agree?

Megan is an inspiring teacher who is sensitive and attuned.

This is a great thread and please do what you can. In Illinois, you can create a medical power of attorney form extremely easily with just one witness. Even if you can't do much else, this at least keeps the people you trust in charge of your medical care.

What is common knowledge in your field, but shocks outsiders? Christian ethics is anti-Utilitarian.

A piece of mine from the early pandemic that was pinned on the bad site: www.chicagomag.com/chicago-maga...

Thought I was jaded, but then I gasped at the Mike Huckabee announcement.

It's good to see lots more religion scholars landing here. I've been here for a while, but haven't posted much. Ready to get started though!