Here are some real statements from Pope Leo that many people who have been sharing fake memes seem to have been looking for.

Pope Leo XIV, who has made peace and unity priorities of his pontificate, emphasized that “the more we are reconciled, the more we Christians can bear credible witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which is a proclamation of hope for all” and, in the words of Pope Francis, “a message of peace and universal…

Ties of Blood and Water #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 19) Kira re-evaluates a Cardassian father figure

Rewatching ST:DS9 Kira is excited to welcome Tekeny Ghemor, the sympathetic Cardassian who was tricked into believing a surgically-altered Kira was his daughter (s3e5 “Second Skin”). Now that Dukat and the Dominion have displaced the legitimate government on Cardassia, Kira has high hopes that Ghemor will inspire a resistance, but before the opening credits roll,…

Business as Usual #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 18) Quark accepts a lucrative job offer; O’Brien carries baby Yoshi everywhere.

Rewatching ST:DS9 Playing tongo at the bar, Dax is annoyed that Quark is distracted by bad financial news. He’s put the bar up as collateral to three different debtors and he’s wiped out. At this very moment, because the opening credits are gonna roll soon, Quark’s cousin Gaila the weapons dealer shows up with a…

Touch Me Now: York Plays 2025

A cast of hundreds participated in a public medieval re-enactment dramatizing the Christian story from Creation through Final Judgement at the University of Toronto a few weeks ago.  I attended as the event videographer. I had at least three cameras running at all times — sometimes five — while a roving camera also caught the…

Pesky journalists, always showing up to document atrocities.

No Democratic president should send in troops trained for lethal combat into a pro-life rally, a worship service, a gun show, or any other peaceful gathering expressing solidarity on an an issue that rubs Democrats the wrong way, at least not in a land where people have first amendment freedoms (no establishment or prohibition of…

A Simple Investigation #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 17) Odo falls for a femme fatale

Rewatching ST:DS9 A duo of knobby-faced macguffin-hunters, bantering like the crooks from Home Alone, rough up a bumpy-foreheaded alien, then vaporize him. In Quark’s, Bashir is happily casting his friends Dax and O’Brien in his next unnamed-for-copyright-reasons British superspy holodeck adventure, Operation Nudge-Wink. Odo declines, looking uncomfortable. I had never seen this episode before. What…

AP wins reinstatement to White House events after judge rules government can’t bar its journalists

A federal judge ordered the White House on Tuesday to restore The Associated Press’ full access to cover presidential events, affirming on First Amendment grounds that the government cannot punish the news organization for the content of its speech. U.S. District Judge Trevor N. McFadden, an appointee of President Donald Trump, ruled that the government…

The Darkness and the Light #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 11) A serial killer targets Kira’s former resistance colleagues

Rewatching ST:DS9 In a cave (again with the caves), a pleasant-looking Bajoran monk welcomes guests to a “days of atonement” retreat, and is zapped by a beam of light. In the infirmary, the very pregnant Kira, griping comically that the herbs she’s been prescribed mean sedatives don’t work, learns that Latha, formerly a violent member…

No one’s ready for this: Our basic assumptions about photos capturing reality are about to go up in smoke.

Everyone who is reading this article in 2024 grew up in an era where a photograph was, by default, a representation of the truth. A staged scene with movie effects, a digital photo manipulation, or more recently, a deepfake — these were potential deceptions to take into account, but they were outliers in the realm…

My daughter who sometimes does things will be singing & swinging August 16 – 25 with @frontporchtheatricals

My daughter who sometimes does things will be singing & swinging August 16 – 25 with @frontporchtheatricals Similar:40 Things I Want to Tell My Kids Before They're Too Cool to ListenAfter the 20th item I kind of got the gu…CultureFrozen opens tonight. (All shows have been sold out for over a month.)DramaMy wife Leigh will…

Delightfully geeky news story about a legal kerfuffle over typefaces

I’m very amused at this nerdy news story about some tension between a judge who asks for legible documents and a lawyer who files documents with flasher typography.   While I recognize that language changes and the distinction between “font” and “typeface” is unimportant to the general public, I teach my journalism students that historically…

Travel trouble, gun restrictions and no more ‘Mr Trump’: the trials of life as a felon

It’s unlikely to be at the forefront of the former president’s mind as he reflects on the verdict, but one immediate consequence is that Trump will probably lose the honorific title of “Mr” in the news pages of the UK’s Daily Telegraph. The Telegraph’s style guide states: “Defendants in criminal court cases … are to be referred…

At the Johnstown Flood Museum. (May 31 1889 the neglected dam at the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club broke, unleashing devastation on the valley below.)

At the Johnstown Flood Museum. (May 31 1889 the neglected dam at the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club broke, unleashing devastation on the valley below.) Similar:Twitter / Search – "couldn't remove your contacts" – All Tweets Twitter / Search – “couldn’t remove …AmusingWorld Trade Center Literary and Cultural Reflections (first posted September 11, 2001)…

She was accused of faking an incriminating video of teenage cheerleaders. She was arrested, outcast and condemned. The problem? Nothing was fake after all

Madi Hime is taking a deep drag on a blue vape in the video, her eyes shut, her face flushed with pleasure. The 16-year-old exhales with her head thrown back, collapsing into laughter that causes smoke to billow out of her mouth. The clip is grainy and shaky – as if shot in low light…

Geometric shapes, with several embedded figures that could be dancing or raging, occupy the upper left corner of a mostly blank canvas, with streaks that suggest the artist's own interrupted life.

A.I. ‘Completes’ Keith Haring’s Intentionally Unfinished Painting

After learning of his AIDS diagnosis, artist Keith Haring created the work, “Unfinished Painting” (1989), which is mostly a blank canvas, with streaks that evoke his own interrupted, incomplete life. Someone who thought it was “so sad” that the painting was unfinished used AI to “complete what he couldn’t finish.” Needless to say, the bot…

Skeleton Crew at Barebones

Support the arts in your community. Similar:Inequity and BYODIf we are really wanting to help these k…CultureStudents say they prefer lectures, but "active learning" is more effectiveA recent study measured differences in s…AcademiaThe Inner Light (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 5, Episode 25) When a probe-zapped Picard …Rewatching ST:TNG When a space probe …CultureThe Girl Has…