RIP Apollo app

June 8, 2023
· Martin Kelley

On the tech side of things, I’ve very bummed that the excel­lent iOS Apol­lo Red­dit app has announce it will be shut­ting down at the end of the month. The major­i­ty of my use of Red­dit has been via Apol­lo in recent years. It’s been heart­en­ing to see such a thor­ough­ly well-designed app from an inde­pen­dent devel­op­er and I’ve been hap­py to give a month­ly donation. 

Reports are that Red­dit is prepar­ing for an IPO, which means crap­pi­fy­ing every­thing to make it look more prof­itable for poten­tial investors. The result is that it will be less use­ful for many of its users, who are the ones that cre­ate all the real val­ue in the first place. You’d think the ongo­ing Twit­ter melt­down in val­ue (part­ly from killing off its third-party apps) would be instruc­tive but appar­ent­ly not. It’s a les­son Sil­i­con Val­ley refus­es to learn.

I’ve long thought that the Quak­ers sub­red­dit in par­tic­u­lar filled a lot of the func­tion of the orig­i­nal Quak­erQuak­er: a curat­ed list of inter­est­ing, time­ly online con­ver­sa­tions. I’ll still be around. I have my RSS read­er let­ting me know when there’s new posts there and I will often respond to ques­tions via the Red­dit web­site. But a lot of my “hey what’s going on now” brows­ing has hap­pened on Apol­lo and will stop. 

There’s a 48-hour Red­dit boy­cott hap­pen­ing start­ing June 12 par­tic­i­pat­ing. Judg­ing by the detailed account of cor­re­spon­dence in the Apol­lo devel­op­er’s post, it’s unlike­ly to change any­thing, but Red­dit lead­er­ship will at least see just how pissed many of its users are.

📣 Apol­lo will close down on June 30th. Reddit’s recent deci­sions and actions have unfor­tu­nate­ly made it impos­si­ble for Apol­lo to con­tin­ue. Thank you so, so much for all the sup­port over the years. ❤️
byu/iamthatis inapol­loapp

Functional theology

May 26, 2023
· Martin Kelley

Johan’s book group is read­ing an old lec­ture by Jones, The Nature and Func­tions of the Light in the Thought of George Fox and he reflects on the approach:

Can­by exem­pli­fies a typ­i­cal Quak­er approach to the­ol­o­gy: it’s often func­tion­al. He does­n’t spend time defin­ing “light,” he finds the dis­tinc­tion between “nat­ur­al light” and the Light of Christ unhelp­ful; he does­n’t cling to or gen­er­ate doc­trines. Instead, he describes how the Light of Christ actu­al­ly seems to work in our lives.

Source

I appre­ci­ate Johan’s dis­tinc­tion of func­tion­al the­ol­o­gy here. Every so often my wife will ask me what I think about some spe­cif­ic point of doc­trine, say the nature of Christ. As a Catholic, ana­lyt­i­cal thinker, and reli­gion nerd, this is the kind of thing she nat­u­ral­ly pon­ders, but I rarely give her a very sat­is­fac­to­ry response. I often know the “right” answer accord­ing to tra­di­tion­al ortho­dox Chris­t­ian creeds and I’m always curi­ous what oth­ers make of ques­tions like these, but what I myself believe is shaped and large­ly bound­ed by my own expe­ri­ences of Christ work­ing in my life. I’m adding Jones’s arti­cle to my read­ing list.

The Friendly Mennonite

May 8, 2023
· Martin Kelley

From Nathan Per­rin: “When my Quak­er friends heard I was going to Chicagoland to min­is­ter at Lom­bard (Illi­nois) Men­non­ite Church, they asked sev­er­al ques­tions. One ques­tion that they asked was whether or not I renounced Quak­erism by tak­ing this call­ing. The brief, less com­plex answer is: No.”

The friendly Mennonite | Mennonite Church USA
The friend­ly Men­non­ite | Men­non­ite Church USA 

This blog post is part of the “I choose to be Men­non­ite because …” series. See the call…
Mennonite Church USA Men­non­ite Church USA 

Presentation on the Underground Railroad in South Jersey

May 5, 2023
· Martin Kelley

Locals: I’m real­ly excit­ed about a pro­gram Crop­well Meet­ing is host­ing this Sun­day: local his­to­ri­an Paul W. Schopp will come and talk about his­tor­i­cal Black towns around Marl­ton, South Jer­sey, and their involve­ment in the Under­ground Railroad.

The Quak­er con­nec­tion is not just the venue of course. The ear­li­est Friends in the Marl­ton area enslaved Africans, which was the norm among Quak­ers in the ear­li­est colo­nial days. From my read­ings, slav­ery was on the decline (immi­grat­ing Ger­mans were a more desir­able work­force) until the dis­rup­tions of the French and Indi­an war threat­ened to kick the slave trade back into high gear, which in turn inspired a new gen­er­a­tion of Quak­er abo­li­tion­ism. This includ­ed Joshua Evans, of what lat­er became Marlton/Cropwell, who was a trav­el­ing com­pan­ion of the more well-remembered John Wool­man in his anti­slav­ery trav­el­ing ministry.

By the ear­ly nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, most Quak­er towns in South Jer­sey had freed Black towns near­by, on land typ­i­cal­ly deed­ed by Quak­er farm­ers. Friends have a ten­den­cy to some­times over-sell our his­tor­i­cal involve­ment in the Under­ground Rail­road but the real key to the rail­road­’s suc­cess were these freed Black towns. In the area around Crop­well, a town called Mil­ford (now Kres­son) served this role. I don’t know any­thing about it specif­i­cal­ly but Schopp has stud­ied it, along with lots of these his­tor­i­cal Black towns and I’m very inter­est­ed to learn more about them.

Fol­low the link below for some more on Mil­ford, includ­ing a TV episode fea­tur­ing two descen­dants of the Tru­itt fam­i­ly and part­ly filmed at Crop­well Meeting.

https://​crop​wellquak​ers​.org/​m​a​y​-​7​-​p​a​u​l​-​w​-​s​c​h​o​pp/

Testimonies and scandals

May 5, 2023
· Martin Kelley

From Bri­an Dray­ton: “An essen­tial fact to med­i­tate upon is that regard­less of what we say, the way we act, the way we are, is “our tes­ti­mo­ny to the whole world.” In that con­nec­tion, what are we show­ing, and what can we show, about what we believe about the foun­da­tions of our activities?”

Testimony and scandal
Tes­ti­mo­ny and scandal 

Dear Friend: The con­cern under which I write leads me to con­sid­er two words, tes­ti­mo­ny and scan­dal, and…
Amor vincat Amor vincat 

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!