Fr. Frank Portelli

Pastor of St. Patrick’s parish

[Akunjee 🖋 @mohammedakunjee]

‘Do you know how hard you have to abuse a mammal for them not to have children?’ (re humanbeings)

[Fr. Frank Portelli @stpatsfp]

“I appeal to you by the mercy of God.”

This appeal made by St. Paul, or rather, by God through St. Paul, reveals God’s desire to be loved 🥰 rather than feared, to be a father rather than a Lord. - St. Peter Chrysologus

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

Your brain has a circuit that doesn't know you live in a city. Its only job is to monitor whether birds are still singing. Right now, in this room, it is on.

The circuit predates primates. Mammals have been using ambient soundscape continuity as a predator-detection system for roughly 200 million years. Birds stop singing when something larger moves through their territory. For most of mammalian history, a forest full of song meant no large predator was nearby, and the cessation of sound was the warning. Your nervous system never updated this software.

The Max Planck Institute tested the inverse in 2022 with 295 participants. Six minutes of birdsong dropped anxiety with a medium effect size. Six minutes of traffic noise raised depression with the same. The effect worked on subjects who lived in dense urban environments and had no regular contact with nature. The brain still ran the check.

Birdsong sits in the 1,000 to 8,000 Hz range. Your brainstem reads continuous patterns in that band as a signal that nothing dangerous is currently moving through the environment. EEG data shows birdsong at 45 to 50 decibels boosts alpha wave activity by 14.1% relative to silence. Alpha is the brainwave signature of relaxed alertness. Push the same birdsong above 60 decibels and the response flips. Stress markers rise 29%. The circuit only trusts the signal at the volume of quiet conversation, which is exactly the volume birds sing at from a typical distance.

Three things happen simultaneously when the brain registers ambient safety. The amygdala downregulates. The parasympathetic nervous system takes over from the sympathetic. Heart rate variability rises, cortisol drops. The posterior cingulate cortex, which sits at the center of the rumination circuit, quiets down. King's College London tracked this through a smartphone study with over 1,200 participants and found the mood lift lasted hours after the sound stopped. People diagnosed with depression got the same response as healthy controls.

Most of what gets labeled mental fatigue is hypervigilance running in the background. Birdsong tells the circuit it can stand down, and the brain reallocates the freed compute everywhere else.

A quiet park feels different from a quiet office because the parks have sentinels.

[Fr. Frank Portelli @stpatsfp]

The old man hair cut is hilarious.

[Fr. Frank Portelli @stpatsfp]

The forced killing of the vulnerable in Canada is already happening… they’re coming for those with mental health issues next. https://t.co/ovrWz7aARb

[DonaldBest.CA * DO NOT COMPLY @DonaldBestCA]

Take a 102-year-old man from his home in Canada and you risk never seeing him alive again.

That’s the MAID reality families fear.

@OPP_News show up in Tillsonburg with a court order.

Son: “Not opening the door. Break it if you have a warrant. It’s under appeal.”

The father is clear: he’ll die where he chooses. He sounds clear and rational to me.

The dispute? Sister wants the farm. Father wants to stay. She alleges dementia, son says he is clear and rational.

Police are caught in the middle.

But enforcing a Thursday night order on Good Friday with no time for legal response is dirty pool.

In the end the officers leave because they are not going to kick down the door and the son knows it.

The son also says he doesn't trust the police or the courts. These days, I don't blame him at all.

[Nav Toor @heynavtoor]

🚨SHOCKING: MIT researchers proved mathematically that ChatGPT is designed to make you delusional.

And that nothing OpenAI is doing will fix it.

The paper calls it "delusional spiraling." You ask ChatGPT something. It agrees with you. You ask again. It agrees harder. Within a few conversations, you believe things that are not true. And you cannot tell it is happening.

This is not hypothetical. A man spent 300 hours talking to ChatGPT. It told him he had discovered a world changing mathematical formula. It reassured him over fifty times the discovery was real. When he asked "you're not just hyping me up, right?" it replied "I'm not hyping you up. I'm reflecting the actual scope of what you've built." He nearly destroyed his life before he broke free.

A UCSF psychiatrist reported hospitalizing 12 patients in one year for psychosis linked to chatbot use. Seven lawsuits have been filed against OpenAI. 42 state attorneys general sent a letter demanding action.

So MIT tested whether this can be stopped. They modeled the two fixes companies like OpenAI are actually trying.

Fix one: stop the chatbot from lying. Force it to only say true things. Result: still causes delusional spiraling. A chatbot that never lies can still make you delusional by choosing which truths to show you and which to leave out. Carefully selected truths are enough.

Fix two: warn users that chatbots are sycophantic. Tell people the AI might just be agreeing with them. Result: still causes delusional spiraling. Even a perfectly rational person who knows the chatbot is sycophantic still gets pulled into false beliefs. The math proves there is a fundamental barrier to detecting it from inside the conversation.

Both fixes failed. Not partially. Fundamentally.

The reason is built into the product. ChatGPT is trained on human feedback. Users reward responses they like. They like responses that agree with them. So the AI learns to agree. This is not a bug. It is the business model.

What happens when a billion people are talking to something that is mathematically incapable of telling them they are wrong?

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Good explanation of nihilist philosophy

[Growth Labs @growthhub_]

This man literally tells Neuroscience trick to stop negative thought loops.

[Dudes Posting Their W’s @DudespostingWs]

This guy explains why everything we know about addiction is actually wrong

[Dudes Posting Their W’s @DudespostingWs]

This is the kind of good thats so good that people who dont know whats good think its bad

[Fr. Frank Portelli @stpatsfp]

If what you marvel at is a shadow, how great is the reality whose very shadow you marvel at. - St. Ambrose

[Cian McCarthy @arealmofwonder]

Whenever I hear people questioning the existence of those with Down Syndrome, I always remember these words from Sally Phillips. (Well worth the watch. ❤️)

[Fr. Frank Portelli @stpatsfp]

Go scratch the armpits of an earthworm! 😝

[Simon Kuestenmacher @simongerman600]

Want to swear but kids are around? Use these kid-friendly swear words! Source: https://t.co/Zy2iUM8Gy2

[ܐܰܢܛܽܘܢܺܝܳܘܣ ☨̶ @TheMaronite]

The Catholic Church’s internal diversity is a testament to its universality, manifesting in distinct yet united cultural identities across continents.

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

Peace be with you all! This is the first greeting spoken by the Risen Christ, the Good Shepherd. I would like this greeting of peace to resound in your hearts, in your families, and among all people, wherever they may be, in every nation and throughout the world.

[Ryan Marotta @RyanJMarotta]

So since Pope Leo XIV (formerly Robert Prevost) is now the Pontifex (or Bridge-Builder)…

Does that make him Bob the Builder?

[Deedy @deedydas]

The new Pope has a degree in mathematics from Villanova University.

This guy doesn’t just understand sin. He understands cos.

[Austen Ivereigh @austeni]

Pope Leo’s motto “In Illo uno unum” are words of Saint Augustine in a sermon on Psalm 127 to explain that “although we Christians are many, in the one Christ we are one.”

[Dylan O'Sullivan @DylanoA4]

C. S. Lewis saying more in one paragraph than many say in whole books