The Cogitating Ceviché Week in Review 25-20
Discussion via NotebookLM
🗞️ Cogitating Ceviche’s Week in Review
Editor’s Note
This week, our writers invite you to wrestle with paradoxes—faith and hospitality, resurrection and recreation, satire and sincerity, data and autonomy. Whether gazing at the stars or reprogramming prophecy, this collection draws a map across history, ethics, and narrative form.
Articles of the Week
🕊️ Reclaiming Hospitality: A Forgotten Christian Weapon in a Fractured World
May 19, 2025By: Calista F. FreiheitCalista argues for reviving hospitality not as sentiment, but strategy—a Christian ethos for healing political and personal rifts. She frames it as a civic virtue with eternal implications.
🔮 The Oracle of Delphi Reprogrammed: Ancient Prophecy in the Age of Predictive AI
May 20, 2025By: Conrad T. HannonHannon collides antiquity with algorithms in this speculative satire, casting today’s predictive models as the high priests of our data-drunk society. It’s wit with a historical footnote and a tech-age twist.
🐺 Of Dire Wolves and Designer Pets: From Pleistocene Resurrection to the Pocket Pachyderm
May 21, 2025By: Conrad T. HannonFrom de-extincted predators to genetically engineered cuteness, this piece tracks our obsession with rewriting biology—and history—for profit and novelty. It's funny, chilling, and sharp.
May 21, 2025By: Gio MarronGio Marron returns with a haunting, allegorical tale. Part myth, part reflection on loss and cosmic entropy, this story uses celestial collapse as metaphor for emotional implosion.
🧠 Passive Voice, Active Results: A Guide to the Gentle Art of Suggesting Catastrophe
May 22, 2025By: Conrad T. HannonHow do institutions dodge blame so elegantly? Hannon peels back the passive constructions that shroud calamity in a cloak of civility. Essential reading for anyone who’s read a corporate apology.
🎩 Edward Lear (1812–1888): The Satirist of Nonsense, Melancholy, and Imagination
May 23, 2025By: Conrad T. HannonIn this biographical portrait, Hannon excavates the melancholy behind Lear’s nonsense verse, offering a modern homage to whimsy laced with pain—and its quiet radicalism.
May 24, 2025By: Conrad T. HannonTech and trust rarely go together. But Hannon shows how Estonia manages both, in a profile of a health system built on data sovereignty, transparency, and function over flash.
May 24, 2025By: Gio MarronA slow-burn thriller set just off the legal edge of the known world. Marron explores the gray zones—legal, moral, emotional—through prose that feels like the sea: deep, quiet, and threatening.
📜 Quote of the Week
“The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes... but right through every human heart.”—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
🧠 Thought-Provoking Questions for the Week
Reclaiming Hospitality
* How might Christian hospitality be weaponized constructively in today's cultural conflicts?
* Can radical kindness actually change civic discourse?
The Oracle of Delphi Reprogrammed
* Are we any wiser than the ancients when we outsource prophecy to machines?
* How does data reframe notions of fate?
Of Dire Wolves and Designer Pets
* What does bio-nostalgia say about our comfort with extinction?
* Can science fiction become science policy?
When The Moon Fell
* What do we lose when we metaphorically “lose the moon”?
* Is cosmic symbolism the last sacred language in a secular age?
Passive Voice, Active Results
* How does grammar obscure culpability?
* What’s the moral risk in passive phrasing?
Edward Lear
* How do nonsense and satire destabilize norms?
* What role does melancholy play in imagination?
Estonia’s Digital Health Revolution
* What would it mean for Americans to own their health data?
* Could Estonia’s model work at scale elsewhere?
Three Miles Out
* Where do laws lose their bite—and what fills that vacuum?
* Can distance from shore also mean distance from conscience?
📚 Additional Resources
* The Ethics of Invention by Sheila Jasanoff
* Being Mortal by Atul Gawande
* Hospitality as Holiness by Luke Bretherton
* The Control of Nature by John McPhee
* The Master and His Emissary by Iain McGilchrist
✍ Final Reflections
From ancient whispers reinterpreted by code to oceanic voids where rules disappear, the week’s pieces dare to ask: who gets to shape the future—those with memories or those with machines? Across stories of faith, satire, ethics, and estrangement, we are reminded that narrative is the oldest and newest form of resistance.
📣 Authors’ Calls to Action
* Calista F. Freiheit: Reclaim a lost virtue. Invite someone over.
* Conrad T. Hannon: When the passive voice appears—challenge it.
* Gio Marron: Let one strange image guide your next piece of writing.
* All authors: And they all encourage you to share and subscribe.
Let me know if you'd like the abstract sunset image to be adjusted to reflect this revision.
Thank you for your time today. Until next time, stay gruntled, curious, and God Bless.
