Jon Coutts

@joncoutts.bsky.social

1220 Followers 399 Following

British-Canadian settler theologian finishing a book on Bonhoeffer, and starting one on (against) AI. Film lover and lifelong fan of #LFC and #Canucks. he/him 🎬 http://letterboxd.com/joncoutts ✍️ http://thissideofsunday.blogspot.com

Cover of Gabrielle Zevin's 'Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow' (with Hokusai's 'Great Wave' on it)
A green soccer pitch under a blue sky with distant strands of grey-white cloud
Bernie Sanders in a winter jacket says "I am once again ..."
Facebook post: "Yesterday the President of Alliance Canada called sexuality a matter of orthodoxy. No one checked him on it. The Board has already recommended we escalate it to a fundamental tenet of the faith – which is somewhere between a mistake and a heresy, but is certainly a call for schism – but the majority sought to leave this under their control. All of this is sadly not surprising to me, because the force of it has already been brought down on some of us – without the discussion they claim to want. What I do find surprising is the silence – with a few shining exceptions – from people with power who ought to know better. I want to believe that some are quietly voicing concerns in the dimly lit hallways where the cogwheels turn, but what now, when this comes at us on the floor? Will there have been any who spoke into the wheel? Or are these the moderates MLK was talking about from jail?"
The Toronto skyline looking south at the CN Tower from the U of T campus
Star Trek title generator with monologue from Big Lebowski
Album cover: a man lies on a hospital bed while a doctor and nurse remove a ukulele from his chest
3. Free email is not enough. The decadence of a culture or civilization, and indeed its ruling class, will be forgiven only if that culture is capable of delivering economic growth and security for the public. 4. The limits of soft power, of soaring rhetoric alone, have been exposed. The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software. 5. The question is not whether A.I. weapons will be built; it is who will build them and for what purpose. Our adversaries will not pause to indulge in theatrical debates about the merits of developing technologies with critical military and national security applications. They will proceed.
Three records ready to go: Japanese Breakfast's Jubilee, Michael Kiwanuka's Home Again, and Beach House's Teen Dream
Putting on clown make up
Two dandelions I plucked from the grass at Flosssenburg, where Bonhoeffer was killed by Nazis on April 9, 1945
Old guy meets monolith at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey
$46.80 is the cheapest seat in BMO Field today
Angine de Poitrine live on KEXP
Me and Tim
This is an important point for several reasons. Firstly, already in the early 1990s, we see Taylor conciliating with liberalism and recognizing that its accomplishments ought to be carried forward—provided they are properly situated and balanced. But second and far more importantly, Taylor’s sage warning that liberal justice and freedom would be compromised by an overemphasis on market logics to the exclusion of all other concerns was widely ignored by neoliberal politicians and thinkers. Inequality was allowed to soar, political power was permitted to concentrate ever more firmly in oligarchic hands, towns and communities were gutted as jobs left and never came back, and worse. All this vindicates Taylor’s longstanding worry that in the absence of a tolerable liberal modernity, the romantic yearning for older, conservative forms of order and hierarchy could readily resurface and gain momentum. Liberals would not be in this mess if we had listened.
The Perfect Neighbor ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ The Alabama Solution ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Cuttong Through Rocks ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Come See Me in the Good Light ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️½
The Tragically Hip, Up to Here
Bell's AI Fabric ad: "At the beginning of the industrial revolution..."
Rupert Murdoch meme but it's Danielle Smith saying "careful mate, that foreigner wants your cookie."
Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie Directed by Matt Johnson 102 minutes
Bell Canada to launch 6 AI data centres in BC
Poster heading says "Turning Point Alberta Empoweri g Alberta's Youth Charlie Kirk's Vision, Alberta's Future"
Broken Social Scene, Metric, and Stars launch an american tour + toronto
A panorama from inside Flossenbürg concentration camp, with the prison yard where people were executed on the left, and the village on the right
Michael Scout shouts "I declare ... AAR relocated!"
Me and Angie beneath the CN Tower and a cold white sky
BBC Radio Bristol asked "if schools should be stopped from selecting children based on their faith" I asked "how about based on wealth?"
seats around me on the flight that have no bodies in them
Letterboxd List by mrbalihai: Bono Free, as Free as the Wind Blows Provided as a courtesy to the discerning Letterboxd member who prefers less insufferable Irish rockstar in their music documentaries* *-Disclaimer: although every effort has been made to certify that Bono does not appear in these documentaries, some may still contain trace amounts of Bono used in post-processing.
Richard Bernier, in Critical Theology 8.1 (Fall 2025): "I need surely not tell you what a risk this fanatical commitment to human dignity poses for the smooth functioning of all our systems of finance and society. Just when an employee has learned to see their time as the property of their employer, and to feel guilt accordingly for every lapse in productivity, theology comes along and insists that their existence cannot be bought. Just when a complacent citizenry has been lulled into a weary and resigned resistance to the work that is required to make real changes, theology urges them to consider every day as an opportunity to learn to be more human. Just when we have learned to be grateful to plutocrats and kleptocrats, warlords and thugs, for graciously allowing us to live and breathe on some tiny fragment of their world, a real embrace of the notion of imago Dei renders one unfit to be a fungible consumable and inept at being a good little capitalist drone."
From The Spawl: '"Accommodating growth has been done by, in effect, robbing monies from some of the sustainment work that should have been ongoing,” Kiefer told council.'
The US President (Henry Fonda), speaking to Moscow on the brink of nuclear destruction in response to the excuse that it was an accident, says: "We're to blame ... we let our machines get out of hand"
Benedict Wong and Werner Herzog
2025 films and TV shows from best to worst, with One Battle and Adolescence on top, and Black Back and After the Hunt at the bottom
Cover of bell hooks' The Will to Change
Goodreads 2025 reading challenge. Goal was 52, and I read 31
Guy my dad's age: Bitter about '82 Guy my age: Bitter about '94 Guy my nephews' age: Bitter about '11 ALL: Bitter about Hughes
An open copy of Barth's Römerbrief in front of Paul Nimmo's essay on The Orders of Creation in Barth's Ethics
Screengrab from Dead Poets Society where Neal tells Todd "this desk set wants to fly ... the world's first unmanned flying desk set" (and Todd throws it off the bridge). Heading: Todd's Dad Told Him to Use Chat GPT
Emil Brunner, The Divine Imperative, p. 24
"Sometimes I worry about a society brought up on superheroes rather than muppets. Does it fantasize heroic solutions from scratch rather than imagining the infrastructures of care that could be built to alleviate harm? Jesus’ parable is challenging, but it does not entail a call to become supernatural, as testified by its inclusion of an innkeeper and donkey and medicines. No doubt the Samaritan models a courageous act of love that overrides pressures and prejudices, but so too the Innkeeper prompts the creation of hospitals and highway patrol. It always feels like a missed opportunity when the Priest and Levite are rendered as cartoonish excuse-makers rather than a representation of the everyday dilemmas people face in an ever-more tangled world. There might a hundred reasons why people hesitate to stop on Robbers’ Road, and a hundred more reasons why people fall through the cracks on Sesame Street. The complexities of modern life do not cancel out the call to indiscriminate love, but they do challenge us to channel that love into the cultivation of infrastructures of care and the acceptance of responsibilities within them."
"This does not imply an ecumenism that attempts to return to the state prior to the divisions, nor is it a mutual recognition of the current status quo of the diversity of Churches and ecclesial communities. Rather, it is an ecumenism that looks to the future, that seeks reconciliation through dialogue as we share our gifts and spiritual heritage. The restoration of unity among Christians does not make us poorer; on the contrary, it enriches us."
LFC TV interview of Federico Chiesa: Pineapple on pizza? I don't care. Cappuccino after noon? I don't care. Signature dish at home? Don't come to my house.
Phoenix, Bankrupt! Radiohead, In Rainbows Beach House, Teen Dream Broken Social Scene, Forgiveness Rock Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot Phoebe Bridgers, Punisher
I guess this is the Colorado Avalanche versus the Carolina Hurricanes but they're wearing the old jerseys of Quebec's Nordiques and Hartford's Whalers