He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay.
On 04/05/2026,
in Emotion, faith, global / globalization, hearts -- matters of the heart, history, relationships, religion, society, youth,
by Daniel Christian
On 03/08/2026,
in architecture, art, creativity, digital photography, faith, history, photography, religion,
by Daniel Christian
Rediscover a Rembrandt After More than Six Decades in Hiding — from thisiscolossal.com by Kate Mothese and Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (Rembrandt)
In 1898, Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum staged an exhibition of paintings by renowned Dutch Golden Age artist Rembrandt (1606-1669). Included in this show was a 23-by-19-inch oil painting titled “Vision of Zacharias in the Temple,” which was completed in 1633, relatively early in the artist’s career. Fast-forward to 1960, and the work was deemed to have not actually been made by Rembrandt. Despite that in the past it had been catalogued as part of his oeuvre, that was no longer the case. So, a private collector purchased it in 1961, from which point on, it remained out of sight—until now.
Also from thisiscolossal.com, see:
Scale the Dramatic Verticality of Grundtvigs Kirke in David Altrath’s Dreamy Photos — from thisiscolossal.com by Kate Mothes and David Altrath
On 01/06/2026,
in computer science, content development, aggregation, repositories, creativity, design, education, education technology, educational games / serious games, engagement / engaging students, experimentation, graphics, history, ideas, instructional design, journalism, K-12 related, learning, learning ecosystem, mathematics, multimedia, music, neurodivergent/special needs, platforms, podcasting, STEAM-related, teachers, tools, United States, vendors, writing, youth,
by Daniel Christian
6 Ed Tech Tools to Try in 2026 — from cultofpedagogy.com by Jennifer Gonzalez
It’s that time again ~ the annual round-up of tech tools we think are worth a look this year. This year I really feel like there’s something for everyone: history teachers, math and science teachers, people who run makerspaces, teachers interested in music or podcasting, writing teachers, special ed teachers, and anyone whose course content could be made clearer through graphic organizers.
Also somewhat relevant here, see:
- Edtech Show & Tell January 2026 — from techlearning.com by Diana Restifo and Ray Bendici
New edtech products that have caught our attention this month - Best Sites & Apps for K-12 Education Games — from techlearning.com by Diana Restifo
Game-based learning is a great way to integrate technology into the classroom while engaging kids with real learning. - Wonder Tools Tidbits to Start 2026 — from wondertools.substack.com by Jeremy Caplan
AI-spotting games, smart reads, and gems you missed
Field Kallop Meditates on Universal Patterns Through Bold Chromatic Compositions — from thisiscolossal.com by Field Kallop and Grace Ebert
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On 11/13/2025,
in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, A/V -- audio/visual, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, bots, computer science, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, creativity, digital audio, emerging technologies, Emotion, engagement / engaging students, experimentation, global / globalization, history, human-computer interaction (HCI), innovation, media/film, platforms, play, productivity / tips and tricks, programming, society, story, storytelling, the downsides of how people use tech, tools, trends, United States, vendors,
by Daniel Christian
ElevenLabs just launched a voice marketplace — from elevenlabs.io; via theaivalley.com
Via the AI Valley:
Why does it matter?
AI voice cloning has already flooded the internet with unauthorized imitations, blurring legal and ethical lines. By offering a dynamic, rights-secured platform, ElevenLabs aims to legitimize the booming AI voice industry and enable transparent, collaborative commercialization of iconic IP.
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[GIFTED ARTICLE] How people really use ChatGPT, according to 47,000 conversations shared online — from by Gerrit De Vynck and Jeremy B. Merrill
What do people ask the popular chatbot? We analyzed thousands of chats to identify common topics discussed by users and patterns in ChatGPT’s responses.
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Data released by OpenAI in September from an internal study of queries sent to ChatGPT showed that most are for personal use, not work.
Emotional conversations were also common in the conversations analyzed by The Post, and users often shared highly personal details about their lives. In some chats, the AI tool could be seen adapting to match a user’s viewpoint, creating a kind of personalized echo chamber in which ChatGPT endorsed falsehoods and conspiracy theories.
Lee Rainie, director of the Imagining the Digital Future Center at Elon University, said his own research has suggested ChatGPT’s design encourages people to form emotional attachments with the chatbot. “The optimization and incentives towards intimacy are very clear,” he said. “ChatGPT is trained to further or deepen the relationship.”
Per The Rundown: OpenAI just shared its view on AI progress, predicting systems will soon become smart enough to make discoveries and calling for global coordination on safety, oversight, and resilience as the technology nears superintelligent territory.
The details:
- OpenAI said current AI systems already outperform top humans in complex intellectual tasks and are “80% of the way to an AI researcher.”
- The company expects AI will make small scientific discoveries by 2026 and more significant breakthroughs by 2028, as intelligence costs fall 40x per year.
- For superintelligent AI, OAI said work with governments and safety agencies will be essential to mitigate risks like bioterrorism or runaway self-improvement.
- It also called for safety standards among top labs, a resilience ecosystem like cybersecurity, and ongoing tracking of AI’s real impact to inform public policy.
Why it matters: While the timeline remains unclear, OAI’s message shows that the world should start bracing for superintelligent AI with coordinated safety. The company is betting that collective safeguards will be the only way to manage risk from the next era of intelligence, which may diffuse in ways humanity has never seen before.
Which linked to:
- AI progress and recommendations — from openai.com
AI is unlocking new knowledge and capabilities. Our responsibility is to guide that power toward broad, lasting benefit.
From DSC:
I hate to say this, but it seems like there is growing concern amongst those who have pushed very hard to release as much AI as possible — they are NOW worried. They NOW step back and see that there are many reasons to worry about how these technologies can be negatively used.
Where was this level of concern before (while they were racing ahead at 180 mph)? Surely, numerous and knowledgeable people inside those organizations warned them about the destructive/downside of these technologies. But their warnings were pretty much blown off (at least from my limited perspective).
The state of AI in 2025: Agents, innovation, and transformation — from mckinsey.com
Key findings
- Most organizations are still in the experimentation or piloting phase: Nearly two-thirds of respondents say their organizations have not yet begun scaling AI across the enterprise.
- High curiosity in AI agents: Sixty-two percent of survey respondents say their organizations are at least experimenting with AI agents.
- Positive leading indicators on impact of AI: Respondents report use-case-level cost and revenue benefits, and 64 percent say that AI is enabling their innovation. However, just 39 percent report EBIT impact at the enterprise level.
- High performers use AI to drive growth, innovation, and cost: Eighty percent of respondents say their companies set efficiency as an objective of their AI initiatives, but the companies seeing the most value from AI often set growth or innovation as additional objectives.
- Redesigning workflows is a key success factor: Half of those AI high performers intend to use AI to transform their businesses, and most are redesigning workflows.
- Differing perspectives on employment impact: Respondents vary in their expectations of AI’s impact on the overall workforce size of their organizations in the coming year: 32 percent expect decreases, 43 percent no change, and 13 percent increases.
Marble: A Multimodal World Model — from worldlabs.ai
Spatial intelligence is the next frontier in AI, demanding powerful world models to realize its full potential. World models should reconstruct, generate, and simulate 3D worlds; and allow both humans and agents to interact with them. Spatially intelligent world models will transform a wide variety of industries over the coming years.
Two months ago we shared a preview of Marble, our World Model that creates 3D worlds from image or text prompts. Since then, Marble has been available to an early set of beta users to create 3D worlds for themselves.
Today we are making Marble, a first-in-class generative multimodal world model, generally available for anyone to use. We have also drastically expanded Marble’s capabilities, and are excited to highlight them here:
On 10/23/2025,
in Daniel S. Christian, Emotion, engagement / engaging students, faith, hearts -- matters of the heart, history, media/film, relationships, religion, society, sociology, story, storytelling, television,
by Daniel Christian
From DSC:
I posted an excerpt of this in another posting, but I wanted to highlight these two powerful, extremely well-done video series for those who might be interested in them.
The House of David is very well done! I enjoyed watching Season 1. Like The Chosen, it brings the Bible to life in excellent, impactful ways! Both series convey the context and cultural tensions at the time. Both series are an answer to prayer for me and many others — as they are professionally-done. Both series match anything that comes out of Hollywood in terms of the acting, script writing, music, the sets, etc. Again, both of these series are very well done.
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A sampling of others who cover The Chosen includes:
- Cornerstone’s Guides to The Chosen — from cornerstonefamily.com
- Experience The Chosen — from thechosen.tv
- Northstar Church’s Guide to the Chosen — from northstarfamily.org
On 09/28/2025,
in art, creativity, Emotion, hearts -- matters of the heart, history, relationships, society, sociology,
by Daniel Christian
Tenderness and Empathy Prevail in Bisa Butler’s Nostalgic and Vibrant Quilts — from thisiscolossal.com by Bisa Butler and Kate Mothes
On 08/05/2025,
in faith, global / globalization, hearts -- matters of the heart, history, relationships, religion, youth,
by Daniel Christian
You are my refuge and my shield;
I have put my hope in your word.
But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”
2 “This is what the Lord says, he who made the earth, the Lord who formed it and established it—the Lord is his name: 3 ‘Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.’
On 07/24/2025,
in Daniel S. Christian, ethics, history, legislatures / government / legal, morals/values, United States,
by Daniel Christian
The Magi Visit the Messiah — from biblegateway.com
2 After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi[a] from the east came to Jerusalem 2 and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”
3 When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. 4 When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born. 5 “In Bethlehem in Judea,” they replied, “for this is what the prophet has written:
6 “‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for out of you will come a ruler
who will shepherd my people Israel.’[b]”
7 Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. 8 He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search carefully for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him.”
9 After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. 10 When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. 11 On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. 12 And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.
The Escape to Egypt
13 When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”
14 So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, 15 where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.”[c]
16 When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. 17 Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:
18 “A voice is heard in Ramah,
weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
and refusing to be comforted,
because they are no more.”
From DSC:
Herod gave the order to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under.
So, as you can see from this excerpt from the Bible, kings can do whatever the hell they want to do. As such, we don’t want a king here in America. That will NOT make America great again…no way. Especially with someone like Donald Trump, who should be in jail…not in the presidency.
On 07/24/2025,
in Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, emerging technologies, Google, history,
by Daniel Christian
Aeneas transforms how historians connect the past — from deepmind.google
Introducing the first model for contextualizing ancient inscriptions, designed to help historians better interpret, attribute and restore fragmentary texts.
Today, we’re publishing a paper in Nature introducing Aeneas, the first artificial intelligence (AI) model for contextualizing ancient inscriptions.
When working with ancient inscriptions, historians traditionally rely on their expertise and specialized resources to identify “parallels” — which are texts that share similarities in wording, syntax, standardized formulas or provenance.
Aeneas greatly accelerates this complex and time-consuming work. It reasons across thousands of Latin inscriptions, retrieving textual and contextual parallels in seconds that allow historians to interpret and build upon the model’s findings.
On 06/24/2025,
in economics, funding / grants, future, game-changing environment, generational differences, history, society, United States,
by Daniel Christian
How the national debt affects the U.S. — and you — in 10 charts — from washingtonpost.com by Jacob Bogage; this is a GIFTED article
The national debt already exceeds $36 trillion and is growing at historic rates. That has cascading consequences for the government and economy.
On 03/28/2025,
in faith, global / globalization, hearts -- matters of the heart, history, relationships, religion, society,
by Daniel Christian
Lord, you are my God; I will exalt you and praise your name, for in perfect faithfulness you have done wonderful things, things planned long ago.
23 Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. 24 See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
Psalm 29:1-2
A psalm of David.
1 Ascribe to the Lord, you heavenly beings,
ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.
2 Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name;
worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness.
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In ‘Flying High,’ Tyler D. Ballon’s Portraits Parallel Sports, History, Identity, and Patriotism — from thisiscolossal.com by Tyle Ballon and Kate Mothes
