The Golden Rule comes to Philly

April 28, 2023
· Martin Kelley

I’ve been antic­i­pat­ing this for a long time now. The Gold­en Rule was a ship that some amaz­ing and crazy activists tried sail­ing into the Pacif­ic nuclear test zones back in 1958 to protest nuclear weapons. About ten years ago a cam­paign orga­nized to fix it back up and it start­ed a tour of the east­ern U.S. last year. It’s final­ly com­ing up the Delaware Riv­er and I’m excit­ed to see it and to con­nect with all the oth­ers excit­ed to see it (I knew Gold­en Rule sailor George Willough­by back in the day and it’ll prob­a­bly be a reunion of some of my old Philly peacenik crowd cir­ca the 1990s).

There’s a Face­book page for its Philadel­phia events. I’ve copied them below. I can’t make the Had­don­field Meet­ing event, as my own Crop­well Meet­ing set up a fab­u­lous event that day before we knew the Gold­en Rule sched­ule, but I’ll try to make the Tues­day after­noon and evening ones.

Sun May 7: 10:00 am — 12:30 pm, Had­don­field Friends Meet­ing (Shore Sup­port) SIGN UP FOR THIS EVENT HERE: https://​fb​.me/​e​/​1​c​U​i​a​t​Sh5  
Learn about the resis­tance embod­ied in the actions of the Gold­en Rule, and espe­cial­ly the role of George Willough­by, a past mem­ber at Haddonfield. 

- Tues­day, May 9 
3 – 4pm The North­wind Sail­ing Schooner escorts Gold­en Rule to 
Penns land­ing. (All seats filled)
https://​north​wind​sail​.org/ meets and 
4 – 5 pm Penn’s land­ing greet­ing event with flags, bells etc. 
City Coun­cilor Mark Squil­la is expect­ed to present a Cita­tion. 
5:30 – 7 pm Cher­ry Street TBA speak­ers, video, work­shop on 
TPNW?

- May 10 WED
Local action 11 — 1 at Viet­nam Vet­er­ans Memo­r­i­al — Speak­ing and leaflet­ing to passers by 
SIGN UP FOR THIS EVENT HERE: https://​fb​.me/​e​/​2​z​U​h​S​Z​Kws 
1 – 3 Break free time
3 ‑6 Boat tours and sails at Pen­n’s Landing

- May 11 Thurs. 
Local action May 11 7 – 9 Swarth­more Library, 
Swarth­more Col­lege — Israa Al-Helli ialhell1@swarthmore.edu
and the Depart­ment of Peace and Con­flict Stud­ies will participate.

- May 12 FRI  
Local action 11 — 1 at Kore­an War Memo­r­i­al — Speak­ing and 
leaflet­ing to passers­by SIGN UP FOR THIS EVENT HERE: https://​fb​.me/​e​/​I​4​p​l​U​3io 
1 – 3 Break free time
3 ‑6 Boat tours and sails at Pen­n’s Landing

- MAY 13, SAT 1:30 – 4pm Peace walk from Lib­er­ty Bell with stop at 
Christ’s Church at 2nd and Mar­ket for brief peace obser­vance.  
Par­tic­i­pants will then pro­ceed to Pen­n’s Land­ing and meet oth­ers 
at Gold­en rule for con­cert at pier. 4 – 8 pm Gold­en rule con­cert, 
speak­ers, food fun danc­ing and the ever pop­u­lar “Wash the Flag”. 
This will be the offi­cial send off… (Gold­en Rule leaves the 
next day)

AI’s Quaker answers are old news

April 27, 2023
· Martin Kelley

Some­times I high­light respons­es that have come into Quak­er Ranter. Elaine Leet wrote a nice email that about my post on the AI chat­bots using Friends Jour­nal as a source for mate­r­i­al for their Quak­er respons­es. Here’s part of her message:

The most impor­tant thing to keep in mind about Chat­G­PT and AI, IMO, is that it’s from the past and about the past, all his­to­ry and estab­lished pat­terns… Friends Jour­nal is about the present and the future, espe­cial­ly those won­der­ful videos fea­tur­ing real present-day Friends. The Now and Tomor­row need to be our focus.

Read her full response in the com­ment sec­tion.

Yes, you could type Quaker queries into the ChatGPT typing monkey or you could, you know, support Friends Journal

April 19, 2023
· Martin Kelley

Via Macken­zie Mor­gan on a Mastodon thread, a Wash­ing­ton Post arti­cle, “Inside the secret list of web­sites that make AI like Chat­G­PT sound smart.” The best part is that it lets you type in URLs to see just how much data the chat­bot is pulling from par­tic­u­lar websites. 

Of course, I had to start look­ing at my niche of Quak­er web­sites. Yes, behind my laid-back demeanor I can be qui­et­ly com­pet­i­tive, so I ranked them. The count is “tokens,” which the arti­cle describes as “small bits of text used to process dis­or­ga­nized infor­ma­tion — typ­i­cal­ly a word or phrase.” This is a Google AI chat­bot but pre­sum­ably all of these bots are scrap­ing the same open web­site data.

  • friend​sjour​nal​.org 1.44m
  • quak​erquak​er​.org 620k
  • afsc​.org 300k
  • qhpress​.org 290k
  • west​ern​friend​.org 230k
  • nyym​.org 210k
  • afriend​lylet​ter​.com 160k
  • pym​.org 150k
  • fcnl​.org 140k
  • quak​ersinthe​world​.org 140k
  • quak​er​pod​cast​.org 130k
  • quak​er​.org​.uk 130k
  • fgc​quak​er​.org 120k
  • Quak​er​.org 110k
  • Quak​er​s​peak​.com 100k
  • quak​er​cloud​.org 58k
  • friend​scoun​cil​.org 39k
  • quak​er​in​fo​.com 32k
  • quak​er​in​fo​.org 22k
  • the​friend​.org 29k
  • fwcc​.world 12k
  • fwc​camer​i​c​as​.org 5.8k

There’s been a flur­ry of blog posts by Quak­ers typ­ing things into Chat­G­PT. See Mark Pratt-Russum’s “A Quak­er Pas­tor Asks Chat­G­BT to Write a Ser­mon” or Chuck Fager’s “Chat­bot Names Top Quak­er Issues; Makes Blog Obso­lete?”

If the Chat­G­PT results sound like a rehashed Friends Jour­nal arti­cle, as Chuck implies, well they most­ly are: with Friends Jour­nal and Quak­erQuak­er (huh!) account­ing for as much of Chat­G­P­T’s con­tent as the next dozen-ranked sites put togeth­er. (Am I miss­ing any content-rich Quak­er site?)

So yes, you could type queries into a chat­bot that has no idea what it’s think­ing. Or you could, you know, sup­port the Quak­er media that Google, Microsoft, Ama­zon, Face­book, etc., are train­ing their bots on. Real Quak­er writ­ing by real Quak­ers who write. I’ve long thought big tech is the biggest threat to Quak­er media but now they’ve start­ed com­pet­ing against us with our own words. It’s real­ly quite nuts. 

Chang­ing hats to wear mine as senior edi­tor of Friends Jour­nal. The rea­son our web­site seems to rule the roost of AI content-scraping is that we don’t have a pay­wall. Gen­er­ous donors, most­ly every­day read­ers, allow us to make all of our arti­cles and Quak­er­S­peak videos and Quak​er​.org explain­ers free to read. Yes, chat­bots are “read­ing” it, but so too are iso­lat­ed seek­ers look­ing for a faith path and spir­i­tu­al answers and stum­bling on Friends Jour­nal. Think about becom­ing an FJ sus­tain­ing mem­ber and at least join the free email list from the box on the home­page. I’m a bit sur­prised and hum­bled that Quak­erQuak­er is so high up; a dona­tion there could help jump­start my 2023 res­o­lu­tion to relaunch it with mod­ern tech. 

Think about it: a donate to Friends Jour­nal and Quak­erQuak­er will help ensure qual­i­ty chat­bot answers for gen­er­a­tions to come!

War and Peace

April 4, 2023
· Martin Kelley

Over on the Crop­well Meet­ing web­site, sto­ries and pic­tures from a talk George Rubin gave this past week­end. George is a dear friend, a mem­ber of Med­ford (N.J.) Meet­ing, and a for­mer Friends Jour­nal trustee. But in the win­ter of 1944 – 45, he was a 19 year old kid from Brook­lyn fly­ing through heavy flak in a B‑17G Fly­ing Fortress over Munich. His expe­ri­ences as a bomber and pris­on­er of war turned him into a com­mit­ted paci­fist: “Human beings are too pre­cious” he told us. I tried to tran­scribe as quick­ly as he spoke, tak­ing pic­tures in the paus­es in between sen­tences. It’s all quite a story.

War Vet and Paci­fist George Rubin Comes to Cropwell

Ten Miles Round

April 1, 2023
· Martin Kelley

I wrote this mon­th’s Friends Jour­nal intro col­umn, “A Hum­ble Band of Prophets”:

I’ve been think­ing a lot about that phone call [from a mem­ber of a strug­gling meet­ing] and about this month’s lead arti­cle by ​​Andy Stanton-Henry, who urges us to think about what it would mean to focus our atten­tion on a radius of ten miles. This exact mea­sure­ment comes from a rous­ing line from twentieth-century Friend Thomas Kel­ly: “Such bands of hum­ble prophets can recre­ate the Soci­ety of Friends and the Chris­t­ian church and shake the coun­try­side for ten miles around.” Kel­ly in turn got it from seventeenth-century Quak­er founder George Fox, who said that any­one raised up as a mod­ern prophet might “shake all the coun­try in their pro­fes­sion for ten miles round.”

Ten miles seems like such a tri­fling­ly small dis­tance to us today. It’s a few min­utes at high­way speeds. The U.S. Cen­sus Bureau tells us the aver­age work com­mute is 27 miles; the Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion cal­cu­lates that U.S. dri­vers aver­age 36 miles per day.

Per­son­al elec­tron­ic com­mu­ni­ca­tion has made dis­tance even more mean­ing­less, and it’s easy to build and main­tain friend­ships unbound­ed by any geog­ra­phy. There’s a mea cul­pa in this: I’m one of those extreme­ly online peo­ple who spends their days in con­stant com­mu­ni­ca­tion with peo­ple well out­side of a ten-mile radius. This can be pro­duc­tive, and yet: those ten miles.

You can read the whole arti­cle by fol­low­ing the link.

A Humble Band of Prophets
A Hum­ble Band of Prophets 

Learn how to revi­tal­ize a Friends Meet­ing by focus­ing out­reach efforts with­in a ten-mile radius of your community.

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Apparently our weddings are now deemed glamorous

March 28, 2023
· Martin Kelley

 

Silent Weddings: The Simple, Unconventional Tradition That Could Be Right For You - Glam
Silent Wed­dings: The Sim­ple, Uncon­ven­tion­al Tra­di­tion That Could Be Right For You — Glam 

Silent wed­dings have been tak­ing place since the 18th cen­tu­ry among the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends. Here’s what…

Glam Glam 

This line is one of my favorites: “Accord­ing to the His­to­ry Chan­nel, an Eng­lish Dis­senter called George Fox estab­lished the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends, or the Quak­er Move­ment, in Eng­land in the 1800s.” I’m not sure what’s worse: admit­ting you’re sourc­ing your work from the His­to­ry Chan­nel or get­ting the date wrong by a cou­ple of cen­turies (Quak­erism is con­sid­ered to have start­ed in 1652).

But in real­i­ty, I’m not sure you need to click through to the arti­cle unless you want to see just how bad it’s got­ten on some of these SEO-chasing con­tent farms. I’m pret­ty sure this was large­ly writ­ten by AI. The ZeroG­PT detec­tor picked up some sen­tences; I checked oth­er arti­cles writ­ten under the same bylines and ZeroG­PT lights up whole paragraphs.

How is blockchain like Quakerism?

March 28, 2023
· Martin Kelley

Filed in the “whaaa?” depart­ment: I find this more curi­ous and sur­pris­ing than enlight­en­ing but the author is a bone fide Friend who argues that the evo­lu­tion of the inter­net is anal­o­gous to a Quak­er mod­el of organization.

Predicting Web3 Using Analogies From Religious History
Pre­dict­ing Web3 Using Analo­gies From Reli­gious History 

The next ver­sion of the web embraces blockchain, smart con­tracts, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. Col­lec­tive­ly known as Web3, it is…

Forbes Forbes 

Brooklyn Friends support a youth-led outreach music and arts show

March 28, 2023
· Martin Kelley

Sup­port­ing younger Friends in an out­reach effort, by Kris­ten Cole:

A few weeks before the show, one of the adult orga­niz­ers made an announce­ment about the upcom­ing show at the rise of meet­ing for wor­ship. He explained, “We did a real­ly rad­i­cal thing. We asked our teens what they would want to do if they could orga­nize an event for young peo­ple. And they told us. And we lis­tened.” At a time when we are deeply engaged in con­ver­sa­tions about the direc­tion of Quak­erism, it’s pow­er­ful to be remind­ed that build­ing toward our future might be eas­i­er to achieve if we open our hearts and minds and lis­ten to the next generation.

Read more at Find­ing the Divine in a Mosh Pit. This is from the March edi­tion of Spark, New York Year­ly Meet­ing’s pub­li­ca­tion, which focus­es on the arts this issue.

Be sure to scroll to the bot­tom of Cole’s arti­cle for a dis­claimer about the mosh pit (spoil­er: there was­n’t one). It made me won­der if kids still mosh. Wikipedia dates the prac­tice to 1980. I’m sure some do, as we live in an age of ever­green sub-genres. The avail­abil­i­ty of music and video on-demand and the abil­i­ty to quick­ly orga­nize com­mu­ni­ties via app make every era eas­i­ly acces­si­ble. I’ve lost track of how many 80s revivals we’ve gone through.

But con­certs these days are so medi­at­ed by cell phones. Even I find myself tak­ing it out when the first chords of a favorite song start up. And even if you your­self resist, oth­ers will have their phones out video­ing you. I’m fas­ci­nat­ed by the videos of high school kids from the 1980s that some­time get post­ed on YouTube. They’re so unfazed by the cam­era, which would have been some bulky Hi8 cam­corder, prob­a­bly because they fig­ured no one would actu­al­ly ever look at the footage. It’s hard to imag­ine the wild aban­don and non-self-consciousness of 1980s mosh­ing when you know any awk­ward move you make might show up on Tik­tok or Ins­ta the next day.