Duende

“Poetic Faiths: New Religions and Ritual as Wroks of Living Art” Vol. 1 now available

The first volume of the Poetic Faiths interview anthology is now available! Poetic Faiths: New Religions and Rituals as Works of Living Art is an anthology of illustrated interviews with an emergent counterculture of artists and activists who take secular humanism as a given, then ask, “Now what?” and find their answers in artistic creation. Poetic … Read more“Poetic Faiths: New Religions and Ritual as Wroks of Living Art” Vol. 1 now available

“Chatbots of the dead”

Amy Kurzweil and Daniel Story write for Aeon on the questions raised by interactive LLM AI simulations of deceased people: These apps and algorithms are part of a growing class of technologies that marry artificial intelligence (AI) with the data that people leave behind. These technologies will become more sophisticated and accessible as the parameters … Read more“Chatbots of the dead”

“The bookends of time”

Thomas Moynihan writes for Aeon: Just under 500 years ago, Nicolaus Copernicus initiated a string of discoveries eventually proving our planet is not the centre of a tidy, manageable cosmos. Instead, Earth pirouettes around a mediocre star within an ungraspably vast Universe. It took generations for people to start noticing – and giving names to … Read more“The bookends of time”

Tom Robbins (July 22, 1932 – February 9, 2025)

Petals fell, poetry was spoken and honey tasted to commemorate the life and death of American author Tom Robbins: The search for meaning is not a whole lot different than the yearning for certainty, which is to say, an unsuitable pursuit for any who might aspire to nimbleness of mind, amplitude of soul, or freedom … Read moreTom Robbins (July 22, 1932 – February 9, 2025)

Death and Dying According to the Church of Reality

The nontheistic Church of Reality offers words of practical wisdom regarding mortality, including the following principles of decisions involving death: Every Death is Unique – Every death is individual and unique. Rules and policies around death should be flexible to accommodate the wishes of the dying person and the person’s family. Wisdom should Prevail – … Read moreDeath and Dying According to the Church of Reality