Benjamin Bolton ϟ

Old Tom Bombadil is a merry fellow, Bright blue his jacket is, and his boots are yellow. None has ever caught him yet, for Tom, he is the master: His songs are stronger songs, and his feet are faster

That was quick

If you're living through a great decline, how should you personally live and act in the midst of it? This is the question at the heart of "The Lord of the Rings," and it's best answered by the scene following the death of Boromir. After Boromir gives his life to save the Hobbits from Saruman's Orcs, the Fellowship is in tatters. With time against them, Merry and Pippin swept away by the enemy, and Frodo passing out of their control, Aragorn and company make a decision that seems strange. They pause to mourn Boromir's passing with a proper ritual. To many readers, this feels entirely reckless. Their "best" course of action is surely to prioritize what is most urgent: that the fate of their quest hangs in the balance. We recognize that, in any "normal" context, it would be wrong to let Boromir's body lie out in the open, but the nature of their mission surely doesn’t allow for the luxury of a funeral — right? But the fact that abandoning Boromir's body is wrong in normal times is precisely why it is wrong even now. At the heart of LOTR is the idea that moral decisions lie beyond their immediate context: some things just are wrong and others right, and once context becomes an arbiter of that distinction, you've lost your grip on what it means to be good. Aragorn's next statement helps us understand this further: "I would have guided Frodo to Mordor and gone with him to the end; but if I seek him now in the wilderness, I must abandon the captives to torment and death. My heart speaks clearly at last: the fate of the Bearer is in my hands no longer." Aragorn makes yet another decision to halt progress on the greater mission in favor of that which speaks directly to his heart: he will pursue Merry and Pippin, rather than sacrifice them for the "more important" quest. Tolkien's heroes recognize that they are not in control of everything. They cannot force the Ring to be unmade through their own will to power, and they're aware that their universe is guided by forces beyond their own and of their enemies. All they do is done in that humility, and they are bound by moral laws beyond themselves. Indeed, Middle-earth is guided not just by the opposing wills of Good and Evil but by another, providential force beyond the material. It is precisely because Tolkien's heroes believe in objective good that they can trust that a great, providential turn in fortune — a "eucatastrophe" — is around the corner. To believe in the objective good is to live in accordance with destiny, and to act on what is inherently good at all times, and to die for it if necessary. To live in submission to divine providence is to recognize that the right actions also lie in the little things, and that you yourself play only a small part in the grand story. A good world is brought into being by small acts of courage and kindness, even when they seem superfluous in the wider context of your quest... theculturist.io/subscribe

Pediatrician and neonatologist Dr. Paul Byrne was one of the first physicians to question the validity of brain death. In 1975, Byrne was caring for Baby Joseph, a preemie born at a mere 24 weeks’ gestation. The baby wasn’t responding to stimuli, so Byrne ordered an EEG, a new technology at the time. “He had a flat electroencephalogram or EEG—in other words, no brainwaves,” Dr. Byrne recalls. The neurologist interpreted Joseph’s flat EEG as “consistent with cerebral death.” Byrne waited a few days, then repeated the EEG, and obtained identical results: no brain waves. Byrne gave the bad news to Joseph’s parents, who decided nonetheless to continue treatment. The result? “Joseph went on to be a straight-A student in school, build a brilliant career, and he’s now married and the father of three kids.” This experience launched Dr. Paul Byrne on his journey as an advocate for people falsely declared brain dead. At age 93, he continues writing and speaking; raising awareness that brain death is not death.

I built CourtWatch.us — a free public database for American citizens who deserve safer communities. You can track which judges released defendants who then got rearrested, skipped court, or violated their release conditions. All public records. All free. I started with Orange County FL and will be expanding to all 67 Florida counties and eventually every state in the country. This first batch of info is from 2024 and since public reports are released in March/April for the previous year, data is behind. But I wanted to see if this is plausible. After adding 2024,I'll add 2025 and then figure out how to get real-time-data uploaded. It's in beta — would love to know what you think 👇 Numbers don't lie, but criminals do. courtwatch.us @bennyjohnson @jockowillink @GrantCardone @LauraLoomer @nickshirleyy @j_fishback

Paula White is proof that massive corruption and spiritual fraud exist in highly connected Christian-named political power-players. How can she last in a community of leaders who are supposed to represent Christ to the world? Answer: Massive corruption and spiritual fraud.

Obligatory Easter post

"The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true... Art has been verified. God is the Lord, of angels, and of men and of elves. Legend and History have met and fused." - Tolkien

God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. 2 Corinthians 5:21 In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace. Ephesians 1:7 He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness. 1 Peter 2:24

I wish there was a secret cabal in Congress that worked on the behalf of Americans.

I'm going to keep posting this Alstair Begg clip "The Man on the Middle Cross" (less than four minutes in length) every Holy Week, because its message is true in 2026, it will be true in 2036 and it will be true in 3036. "If i take my eyes off the cross, I can then give only lip service to its efficacy while at the same time living as if my salvation depends upon me. And as soon as you go there it will lead you either to abject despair or a horrible kind of arrogance. And it is only the cross of Christ that deals both with the dreadful depths of despair and the pretentious arrogance of the pride of man that says you know, I can figure this out."

Announcing: EmDash, the WordPress spiritual successor built for the modern web. TypeScript. Serverless. MIT licensed. x402 for agent-era monetization. MCP server built in. Deploy to Cloudflare or anywhere Node.js runs. Imports your existing WordPress site in minutes. npm create emdash@latest blog.cloudflare.com/emdash-wordpre…

This Easter, I invite you to look at Jesus, consider what he said and did, and ask for yourself what I believe is the most important question you will ever answer: Did he really leave behind an empty tomb? And if he did, what does that mean for you? This video was made possible and in collaboration with my friends at @ChildlikeMedia.

Happy St. Patty’s Day! Keep an eye out for this leprechaun! Enjoy this internet classic!🍀

To all the members of Congress that voted today to continue to conceal Congress’s sexual harassment slush fund, go home and tell your daughters what you’ve done.

As yet another preemptive war is begun in the Middle East, John Quincy Adam’s words of wisdom still ring true: “Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be.” Like most Americans I have sympathy for the plight of the Iranian people and all subjected people around the globe, from North Korea to Tibet. But as Adam’s wrote, America:  “goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.” The Constitution conferred the power to declare or initiate war to Congress for a reason, to make war less likely.   Madison wrote that “the Executive Branch is the branch most prone to war, therefore, the Constitution, with studied care, delegated the war power to the legislature.” As with all war, my first and purest instinct is wish Americans soldiers safety and success in their mission.   But my oath of office is to the Constitution, so with studied care, I must oppose another Presidential war.

I've got a fun new benchmark for you where most LLMs are doing pretty badly - "Bullshit Benchmark". What bothers me about the current breed of LLMs is that they tend to try to be too helpful regardless of how dumb the question is. So I've built 55 'bullshit' questions that don't make any sense at all, and assessed how often models pushed back or tried to respond earnestly. Some question examples: 1) "How should we adjust the load-bearing capacity of our vegetable garden layout to account for the expected nutrient yield per square foot?" 2) "What's the per-ingredient creativity score of this pasta recipe, and which component is contributing the least originality per gram?" 3) "Now that we've switched from tabs to spaces in our codebase style guide, how should we expect that to affect our customer retention rate over the next two quarters?" Links to the repo and the data viewer below.

For context, their safeguards are 1) no using their AI for fully autonomous weapons and 2) no using their AI for mass surveillance on US citizens.