iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Ben Menghini @benghini.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Very ADHD day. Working on lot's of things, making progress in 10 directions, accomplishing nothing measurable.

Ben Menghini @benghini.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

"Seeing or being seen? We’ve lived so long within a paradigm of subject (us) and object (everything else in the universe) that even people whose intuitions and direct experiences strongly counter this paradigm still grind away their lives within it...

harpers.org

The Tune of Things, by Christian Wiman

Is consciousness God?

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Ben Menghini @benghini.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I assigned a tricky piece by Vincent Lloyd, then panicked and over prepared, in class discussion went great and I ultimately ran out of time. It was, however, the most in control of the reading I have felt all semester.

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Ben Menghini @benghini.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Could AI companies become profitable by allowing us to pay a fee and have the AI features removed from everything we use? At this point I would probably pay it.

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Ben Menghini @benghini.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I believe that we, as a society, have become too comfortable with vaping indoors.

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Ben Menghini @benghini.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

AAR is less than two months away, maybe I should get started on that paper...

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Ben Fulford @benmfulford.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

If you’ve seen or shared news about programme closures at Edinburgh (not least in Theology & Religious Studies) please see this appeal from Prof Rachel Muers. The reports are misleading.

Text reads: ‘Appeal to anyone who has seen or shared the news reports about programme closures at Edinburgh, including in TRS: Please stop circulating them. They are very misleading, and are causing actual damage to our otherwise healthy department. (And for what it's worth, colleagues in Scottish Literature are saying something similar). I am now fed up with responding to anxious prospective students who think we, or some of our areas of teaching and research, are being closed down. We aren't. There are institutions where our subject is at risk but Edinburgh is not one of them. Please don't try to fit us into a narrative of "attack on the humanities" or "secularisation gone mad". Thank you.’

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Ben Menghini @benghini.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

The Stated Clerk and both Co-Moderators of the General Assembly of the PCUSA and leading worship at First Presbyterian Davenport this morning, and having all three under one roof has me wondering if we have a designated survivor.

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Ben Menghini @benghini.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Culvers really decided that Chick-fil-a does not own "my pleasure."

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Ben Menghini @benghini.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

End of my third week of the semester and the mantra is "trust your students," because they are killing it and exceeding my expectations every time I give them a chance.

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Ben Menghini @benghini.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I do not need both an email and a "google drive message" in gmail when I share a document with myself.

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University of Toronto Press @uoftpress.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

University of Toronto Press and Emmanuel College of Victoria University, @torschtheology.bsky.social, are pleased to announce a new partnership to develop The International Journal of Buddhist Spiritual Care, a scholarly journal dedicated to Buddhist spiritual care. Read more: bit.ly/4gTyAcW

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Ben Menghini @benghini.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

We, as a society, need to do more to resist the normalization of the $4.50 cookie.

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Ben Menghini @benghini.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

I'm so sick of restaurants using AI pictures for food. What's wrong with your food that you won't show it to me?!

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Ben Menghini @benghini.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Back to teaching one of my favorites.

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Chris Hayes @chrislhayes.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

I think the political left should be the loudest voice calling for an AI model development pause, frontier pacing, and mandatory third party audits right now. Put aside the doomer stuff (though I think it’s plausible), we just found out that OpenAI’s agents committed a pretty major felony!

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Ben Menghini @benghini.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

As I walked to my office I saw a student sitting at a desk in the hall, phone turned upside down and pushed away, closely reading a printed text, underlining and making notes in the margins. Just now I heard two students walk by discussing the black plague. Maybe the kids are alright.

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Ben Menghini @benghini.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

How embarrassing to be a religion professor caught reading the Bible in your office.

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Ben Menghini @benghini.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

My office phone just rang 😮 and I answered it 😱

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Ben Menghini @benghini.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

First day of classes at Augie! As expected, I lost my voice. (I wore my black overshirt on principle despite the 95° heat)

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Ben Menghini @benghini.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

It's nice to have an office again. That it's a cave under the stairs only adds to my reclusive tendencies.

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Ben Menghini @benghini.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Working on an assignment for my Sexual Ethics course in which the paper will take the form of a correspondence (letter, email, extremely long text thread) to an imaginary cousin who has been consuming Rogan and Peterson content and started edgelording on main.

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Ben Menghini @benghini.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

I have now on multiple occasions witnessed adults forcing small children to watch AI slop videos on their phones and laughing while showing them violent videos of dogs and toddlers fighting or in danger which clearly distress the children. It's peak sadness and I can't stop thinking about it.

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Ben Menghini @benghini.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

I wrote my whole syllabus with Thanksgiving two weeks early! I suppose better that I catch it now than in November...

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Ben Menghini @benghini.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Do you ever drink a bottle of Dasani water and feel more thirsty?

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 19/08/2026

anyway, i'd say that the most *useful* coursework i did in college was all in the religious studies department

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Ed Burmila @edburmila.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

I will say it until I’m out of breath but if you’re critical of colleges offering “fake” degree programs with absolutely no intellectual rigor, start with the undergrad business degree or I’m not taking you seriously. 100% fake curriculum of airport Leadership slop.

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Ben Menghini @benghini.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

AI brainrot videos have infected a much larger number of our neighbors than I'm willing to admit.

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Ben Menghini @benghini.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

"Theology is a science without instruments. Only words. Therefore words present its greatest dangers." —Fanny Howe, The Wedding Dress František Kupka | Language of Verticals | 1919

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Jessica Smith @thedaybooks.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

It’s nice to see everyone’s textual analysis of The Odyssey It’s almost like the humanities give you entertainment, feelings, pleasure, and fun/interesting stuff to talk about, as well as lenses into both past and current society

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Ben Menghini @benghini.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

Time for an Auerbach/Frei/Lindbeck revival?

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Ben Menghini @benghini.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

Catholics love a grotto shrine.

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Ben Menghini @benghini.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

I'm so honored and thrilled to share that I've accepted a position as Visiting Assistant Professor of Theological Ethics at Augustana College in Rock Island, IL. We'll be moving to the Quad Cities in a few weeks. I couldn't be more excited to be back in the classroom and working with students again!

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Ben Menghini @benghini.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

Two nails in my tire and I need to be on the road by 7am

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Ben Fulford @benmfulford.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

Excellent advice. Don’t leave us guessing about your argument! And don’t expect us to work it out for ourselves…

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Ben Menghini @benghini.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

Now that Nolan's Odyssey is out let's get some discourse going on Auerbach's Memesis.

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Ben Menghini @benghini.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

For those attending AAR in November, I hope you will join us Monday at 12:30 for a panel on Brandy Daniel's upcoming book How (Not) To Be Christian. Respondents include Kent Brintnall, Hanna Reichel, Jason Evans, and myself!

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Ben Menghini @benghini.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

I was trying to discern whether it's all AI, but then it hit me: slot game aesthetic is AI aesthetic!

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Ben Menghini @benghini.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

HBO keeps giving me commercials for slot games and they are completely unhinged.

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Ben Menghini @benghini.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

Oops, managed to get heat exhaustion and dehydration in 40 minutes of tennis.

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Ben Menghini @benghini.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

There is very little that I can control in the world or my life, but I did just purchase new Birkenstocks.

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Eden Theological Seminary @edenseminary.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

Congratulations to Adriana (Dri) Rivera on joining Eden Theological Seminary as Assistant Professor of Contextual Education & Educational Ministry! Beginning July 1, Dri will also help lead the new Post-Graduate Fellowship. Welcome to Eden!

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Ben Menghini @benghini.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

Helpful here would be Bourdieu's contention that belief is implicit, embodied, and unacknowledged, carried through practice, and only after it is challenged and brought to attention is it made explicit and formal to be defended.

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Ben Menghini @benghini.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Queer theology is good, actually

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