📚 Currently reading: Rooftoppers by Katherine Rundell. I read one of her books last year, and so I put an audio version of this on in the car to listen to with my daughter. We weren’t expecting all the cello references! It feels like there will be more. Enjoying this so far.

Rose of clouds with patches of blue sky is above a landscape of sparse palo verde trees and bushes.

Currently reading: How to Save the World: Disciplemaking Made Simple by Alice Matagora 📚

How AI affects thinking skills and if it matters:.

“The data shows a shift in cognitive effort as knowledge workers increasingly move from task execution to oversight when using GenAI,” the researchers wrote. “Surprisingly, while AI can improve efficiency, it may also reduce critical engagement, particularly in routine or lower-stakes tasks in which users simply rely on AI, raising concerns about long-term reliance and diminished independent problem-solving.”

☄️ Bol Bol!

Is understanding this paragraph part of the test? 🤨

Currently reading: Uncommon Service by Frances X. Frei and Anne Morriss 📚

🎨 So proud of my wife! Check out all these paintings Della did last month. Big images and sale links at dellachelpka.art. Follow her on socials @dellachelpka.art

Arizona Luminaria wrote about yesterday‘s Point In Time Count, where volunteers helped count and survey the homeless in Tucson.

Currently reading: Education of a Wandering Man by Louis L’Amour 📚

The Linda Ronstadt Music Hall. Tucson Symphony Orchestra and Girls Chorus performed Mahler’s 3rd Symphony there last night.

Norman Hubbard:

Put yourself in the shoes of a traveler to ancient Tyre, a city conveniently located where the modern city of Tyre is, in Lebanon. How would you find a church in the first century? There would be no signs. The mechanic at the local Tyre Shop probably couldn’t help. You couldn’t even ask for a “church.” The word “church” (ekklesia in Greek) was a common term that meant “civic gathering.”

You could also forget about asking where the “Christians” gathered. For a time, no one used this term at all. When it came onto the scene (see Acts 11:26), it was almost certainly a slur. In some cases, it could have been lodged as a criminal accusation (see 1 Peter 4:15-16). Asking someone at the Tyre Shop where to find a “Christian church” might have sounded like you were searching for a civic gathering of anti-imperial agitators.

So if you wanted to find a Christian church 2,000 years ago in places like Tyre, you could start by asking where the Jewish synagogue was…. But how would you know whether the synagogue assembly was a group of Christians? You could start by looking at the composition of the group and then listen to what they called each other.

A former limousine truck painted with the American flag design is parked and decaying in a desert landscape. A cutoff telephone poll stands nearby.
From a few different categories, here are the best books I read in 2024.

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Beautiful tomatoes.

A variety of colorful tomatoes at the grocery store.