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On the Yazidi
The Yazidi are the most harshly persecuted minority group you’ve never heard of. For various reasons we will get into, very little ethnographic scholarship exists on the Yazidi. Because of this, a lot of their “canonical” definition as a people is a bit in flux right now. They are rapidly becoming a diaspora people, and…
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A Reasonable Defense of Astrology
I never really thought I would write something like this. Up until pretty recently I was myself quite dismissive of the practice. A couple of years ago I was on the Amtrak with my girlfriend and we had gotten one of the roomettes for the long trip. It was my first time staying in the…
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How to Run LLMs from a USB with Llamafile
Piping hot off the virtual presses is llamafile, a new framework that let’s you run Large Language Models (LLMs) on your local machine on a single file. The aim of the project is to make LLMs more accessible and easy to distribute, but to me, the clearest most immediate value is being able to run…
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Why You Should Read the Bible
The Holy Bible is mostly droll, full of lengthy genealogies, and was originally written poetically in a couple of dead languages that don’t really translate all too well. If you’re Christian, like me, I’m sure (I hope) I don’t have to explain to you why you ought to read the thing. But if you’re not,…
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Skit Screenplay: Jesus’ Lost Years
Episode 1: “DREIDEL” SETTING: OUTSIDE A group of kids plays Dreidel having fun. Laughing and making glib remarks. Jesus approaches the table. JESUS: Hey guys! Mind if I play? JOSIAH: Hey I think I gotta get home. RACHAM: Yeah, I think I need to run, too. GABRIEL: (Skeptical) Okay guys, I’ll see you later. Sure,…
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On Conspiracy Theories
Generally a pretty quick way to shut down a discussion about powerful people doing bad things is to dismiss the whole thing as a “conspiracy theory.” It’s well known, after all, how hard it is to keep secrets. The United States’ most esteemed founder said it best when he said: “Three can keep a secret,…