Part Two consists of two short essays, “To Stand where Christ stands” and “Early Christian Writing”. The first discusses the meaning of “spirituality” in a Christian context, pointing out that, in contrast to the way in which the word is so often used nowadays, spirituality has to do with “a whole human life to be lived in the ‘place’ defined by Jesus”. The second situates early Christian writings in the general context in which the Church lived in the early centuries.

Underlying the book are the presuppositions that “we are because God is,” and that “we are the way we are because of the way God is,” and so to be fully ourselves is to grow into an awareness of God. The book relates the wisdom of the early Eastern monastic tradition to the present situation of Christians, living in a world very different from the one in which that tradition developed. It affirms the continuing relevance of that tradition to the goal of all Christian ascetic endeavour, which is mature humanity, attained by acquiring the “capacity of seeing and sharing the divine glory and joy”.

Like all good retreat addresses, this book informs and enlightens, guiding readers to deeper self-knowledge and discernment, and so to the control of those “passions” that, in the form of emotions and instincts, are the source of so many of the world’s ills, both past and present.

Read it all.

"Eastern monastic writers identified eight passions of the soul. . . These are not necessarily wrong in themselves, but they are 'ways in which natural impulses can be distorted and can cloud our perception'." https://t.co/DGTJXqvtWs

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) January 26, 2024

Israel’s conflict with Hamas is set to be a long one—with both sides struggling to accomplish their fundamental aims and no clear path to any kind of enduring peace.

Israel has sworn to destroy Hamas as a significant military and political force. Hamas is committed to the long-term goal of erasing the Israeli state.

Read it all.

Israel’s conflict with Hamas is set to be a long one—with both sides struggling to accomplish their fundamental aims and no clear path to any kind of enduring peace https://t.co/M1gfz7mFDw https://t.co/M1gfz7mFDw

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) January 26, 2024

While the public’s attention has been captured by AI chatbots, a quiet revolution has been brewing in the sciences. One of the most promising fields AI is impacting is biology—long dominated by the tradition of the “wet lab,” which favors pure experimental data over computer simulation. Deep learning is changing that. It enables computers to understand complex patterns in data and generate ideas based on those patterns, and that’s making AI more and more central to experimental biology. There is no field more complex in its patterns than biology, so AI is the perfect tool for understanding it. And—as a host of new companies are showing—engineering it.

Oddly enough, even the success of large-language models, or LLMs, like ChatGPT could be seen as evidence of AI’s ability to understand biological complexity. After all, language is a product of a particular biology—ours. The text on which ChatGPT is trained is just one of many complex forms of data produced by biological systems. In nature, this complexity reaches up from the smallest working parts—our proteins, our DNA—but also extends up through cells, organs, to physiology, disease, and behavior.

AI, with the right data, can span all of these scales and make sense of the data we collect on all of them. It’s poised to accelerate basic science, the business of biotechs, the behemoth pharmaceutical companies, and the broader bioeconomy.

Read it all.

The most exciting aspect of wet AI is that it promises to turn the molecular world into a programmable medium. That could have far reaching impacts, giving us the ability to imagine new categories of products based on engineered biology.https://t.co/Cb5mziIFaF

— proto.life (@protolifemedia) January 20, 2024

In a 30-square-mile patch of northern Virginia that’s been dubbed “data center alley,” the boom in artificial intelligence is turbocharging electricity use. Struggling to keep up, the power company that serves the area temporarily paused new data center connections at one point in 2022. Virginia’s environmental regulators considered a plan to allow data centers to run diesel generators during power shortages, but backed off after it drew strong community opposition.

In the Kansas City area, a data center along with a factory for electric-vehicle batteries that are under construction will need so much energy the local provider put off plans to close a coal-fired power plant.

This is how it is in much of the US, where electric utilities and regulators have been caught off guard by the biggest jump in demand in a generation. One of the things they didn’t properly plan for is AI, an immensely power-hungry technology that uses specialized microchips to process mountains of data. Electricity consumption at US data centers alone is poised to triple from 2022 levels, to as much as 390 terawatt hours by the end of the decade, according to Boston Consulting Group. That’s equal to about 7.5% of the nation’s projected electricity demand. “We do need way more energy in the world than we thought we needed before,” Sam Altman, chief executive officer of OpenAI, whose ChatGPT tool has become a global phenomenon, said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland last week. “We still don’t appreciate the energy needs of this technology.”

Read it all.

AI needs so much power that old coal plants are sticking around https://t.co/VBOC34Uz8j

— Businessweek (@BW) January 25, 2024

Almighty God, who didst call Timothy and Titus to do the work of evangelists and teachers, and didst make them strong to endure hardship: Strengthen us to stand fast in adversity, and to live godly and righteous lives in this present time, that with sure confidence we may look for our blessed hope, the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Today the Church of England celebrates Timothy and Titus, Companions of Paul

Converted by Paul, Timothy & Titus were entrusted with the care of Christians in Ephesus & Crete. Paul sent them the 3 Pastoral Epistles (1 Tim., 2 Tim., Titus)

Image: Paul writing to Timothy pic.twitter.com/lLYem4sUfQ

— The Anglican Church in St Petersburg (@anglicanspb) January 26, 2024

May we watch for you, O Lord, in the storm, in the earthquake and in the fire; lest in the stillness of the silence you go undetected. Amen.

No place can prepare you for the experiences and feelings you will have on the summit of Haleakalā volcano. The landscape — deeply sculpted, richly colored and forever changing — is unlike anywhere else on Earth.

Photo by @HaleakalaNPS pic.twitter.com/jy9LlxuQL3

— US Department of the Interior (@Interior) January 25, 2024

After this Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiber’i-as. And a multitude followed him, because they saw the signs which he did on those who were diseased. Jesus went up on the mountain, and there sat down with his disciples. Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand. Lifting up his eyes, then, and seeing that a multitude was coming to him, Jesus said to Philip, “How are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?” This he said to test him, for he himself knew what he would do. Philip answered him, “Two hundred denarii would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.” One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, “There is a lad here who has five barley loaves and two fish; but what are they among so many?” Jesus said, “Make the people sit down.” Now there was much grass in the place; so the men sat down, in number about five thousand. Jesus then took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted. And when they had eaten their fill, he told his disciples, “Gather up the fragments left over, that nothing may be lost.” So they gathered them up and filled twelve baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten. When the people saw the sign which he had done, they said, “This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world!” Perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself.

–John 6:1-15

Good morning everyone wishing you a lovely day 😀wonderful wandering thru lovely Longshaw last week 💚#PeakDistrict pic.twitter.com/xwT0FdtuNf

— doristhehat (@doristhehat) January 26, 2024